Diamond Blossom
by TardisSpaceMug
Summary: A geneticist joins an expedition of soldiers and scientists to an island off the Pacific Northwest to investigate mysterious disappearances, where they are confronted by both dangerous mutations and bizarre phenomena that threatens to drive them to madness. An original characters-story set in the Resident Evil universe.
1. The Job

**The Job**

If Rachel had to choose a word to describe the turn of events that she found herself in, it would be 'confused'.

She had been working on the latest batch of test plants together with the rest of the team, a mixed group of interns and researchers investigating the possible applications of genetic modification in engineering new strains of _solanum_ plant (better known as the common potato plant) for greater growth rates, better crop yields, milder or nuttier tastes for different markets around the world. It was an exciting field, but the work itself was terribly boring and exceedingly dry, contrary to what most seemed to believe about work in the field of genetics research.

Most people still had an image of the field affected by the legacy of the Umbrella Corporation and bioterrorism, the images of deformed lifeforms and bio-organic weapons in filthy abandoned laboratories, even if her work was comparatively mundane, even already applied in agricultural services in ways that the general public would be largely ignorant of.

It was why it was so surprising when one day, out of the blue, two men had entered the lab, both dressed in olive green military uniforms. One of the lab workers approached immediately asking about permission and seeing an ID, but without even looking at him the soldier in front flashed his card and the worker stepped back without another word to let him through, his face turning slightly pale.

"Rachel Yun?" he started in a gruff, formal voice.

"I'm Rachel Yun," she introduced. Stared at him for a moment before extending her hand for a handshake like it was something she forgot.

"Geneticist with experience in human genome engineering?"

"That's the one."

The soldier briefly glanced around the lab, particularly at the cultures where shoots were growing. "Moved on to modifying potatoes now?"

She shrugged. "A bit of a change of pace, but yeah."

"And you graduated from Berkeley in 2007?"

"Yes, that too."

The soldier nodded in affirmation. "We're looking for you. Someone with your skillset."

And just like that, she was whisked away from her lab, her friends, coworkers, and trainees, all of them as confused as each other.

It was how Rachel now found herself sitting in the back of a truck and surrounded by soldiers, none of them seemingly wanting to make conversation with the civilian consultant sitting with them, looking very out of place amongst armed military men and women.

That suited her. Rachel never was one for small talk, or 'getting to know people better'.

She stayed silent, kept her own thoughts to herself, as the truck drove on to the military base where a more detailed briefing awaited her.

###

It had been 48 hours since the previous team vanished. Alpha team, that was the unit's designation. They were trained professionals, a joint unit of Navy and Marines - 20 soldiers, each one carefully looked over and psychologically assessed before being approved for the mission. They up and vanished, almost literally. Contact with the unit had simply ceased mere hours after they were dropped off.

"And you don't know what happened?"

"Not a clue." The director looked grim. "Far as we know they just stopped reporting in. Signal wasn't blocked or jammed, and we didn't lose it. It remained open for all of the entire day, but nobody responded to anything we sent out. No reports after the first one, no calls for assistance or backup, and completely nothing on their objectives. 15 hours after they stopped calling in, their signal disappeared from our radars."

Rachel put her hand on her chin, furrowed her brow in thought.

"Pardon me for my bluntness, sir, but as sorry as I am for the tragic and mysterious loss of your men, I'm not sure how I factor into this."

"You have military training, yes?"

"You've seen my files, I'm sure of it. Went through training camp and was stationed in Kabul for three years, military police, but that was 10 years ago. I'm afraid I'm a little rusty if you're asking me to fight, and besides, I work in genetics research now."

The director looked to one of the soldiers, and he nodded. "Can you play the transmission for us?"

And for the next few minutes, she listened intently.

It was the last radio transmission they received from the team, she was told, the last one before all contact abruptly ceased.

It was a disturbing few minutes, to say the least, considering she had no clue what the context of the transmission was.

There was a voice on the radio, a male one, panting and breathing heavily. Almost a full minute passed, with audio of nothing but the man breathing, before he spoke. And when he did, everyone in the room listening in seemed to turn a little pale, for they all could hear the slight trembles, the tension in the man's voice.

Only some words could be picked out, for at several points in the transmission the signal abruptly became scrambled, or the man's voice became distorted into something hideous, unrecognizable, indecipherable.

"Unidentified individuals sighted by guardian angel. Possibly hostile. Please advice?"

"Perimeter is secured for time being, sun's about to go low."

"Food rations are lower than expected. A lot lower."

"Possible biological contamination present. Corporal Becker's in need of aid. Squad medic's studying phenomena as I speak."

And a strange noise in the lower background of the audio, as if there was something making that sound in the far distance of the man transmitting it. It sounded like some kind of animal cry, perhaps a fox's, but the poor quality of the garbled noise produced a sound that was nothing short of unsettling.

More scratching.

"Something's not right with the trees."

And nothing else. No voice, no screaming, nothing. Only the looping feedback of static and what Rachel could only guess was the ambient sounds of a forest.

She furrowed her brow in thought. More curious to know more about the why than she was disturbed.

"Cut it, son," said the director.

Everyone in the room was silent for a moment, until the new images were screened onto the projector. Rachel looked up from her thoughts to see what looked to be a blurry photo of an island, a satellite image. There were blotches of grey vaguely resembling buildings, but it was difficult to make out the details.

"These satellite images are all the only visuals we've got of the destination. The island's almost deserted. They settled it in the beginning of the last century, first for trading and fur trapping, then for skiing during the winters, then it was the phosphate mining, but there never was much to live there for and people started leaving in the 70s when the mine went dry. As far as we know, a dying ghost town is all that's left of the people there, those who can't or won't leave for better pastures elsewhere."

"Where is this island?" she asked.

"About a hundred miles northwest of Washington – close to Canadian waters, I believe."

"And why were soldiers being sent to this lonely little island in the first place?" she asked, a little bit of suspicion creeping into her voice.

"To investigate a high-priority disappearance," immediately answered the director. He elaborated that in the past few months, a boat containing 'sensitive information' as well as persons of interest had vanished in the waters off the coast of Washington state – only now had they successfully narrowed their search down to the waters surrounding this particular island. When she asked why she had never heard of this high-profile vanishing, he replied that there were some things that the federal government could not allow to ever go public, a certain subtly warning tone creeping into his voice.

She shut herself up after that, the message clear.

"So you see," he poured her a mug of coffee, "We're assembling a unit comprising a range of experts in a range of fields. The fact is, we're dealing with a very, very sensitive case here, one where we absolutely cannot afford to let the media up on, and after what happened with the first team, we simply have no idea what to expect. The report he gave of 'biological contaminants' is obviously… disturbing."

"So I see," Rachel said, hesitantly sipping from his offered coffee. "You believe they had encounters with B.O.W.s?"

"It is a… possibility. Just one of many, however."

She nodded in understanding.

"With your background in biological sciences and military experience, I think you'll be a valued asset to our group as a consultant."

She waited a while as she gauged her options. Nobody else spoke a word.

"I'm sorry, sir," she began, "But as much as I understand the need for immediate action, I don't see myself being a part of this. I've got my own priorities, work that I've got to do back in Seattle, but if you need a consultant with expertise in biology, I can vouch for some people that I know."

The director sighed deeply, looking disappointed.

"The choice is yours, Yun."

It was an interesting assignment, and Rachel had to admit that the possibility of researching strange biological phenomena, possibly one of the first to properly do so, was a very tempting proposition. It wouldn't be the first time she risked her life in the pursuit of scientific data, far from it. When the university was assembling a team to assist the BSAA during the biohazard in Edonia she was one of the first to volunteer, the lure of testing samples from new virally-created lifeforms being too tempting an offer for her to pass up.

But with this one, there were too many unknown factors involved. Too much bureaucracy, too, dirty politics that ensured there would inevitably be many things she would probably never be able to share or publish.

What made her change her mind happened later on in the day, as she was poring over the data files containing the information that they could share with her without compromising 'national security'. As her eyes scanned the list of soldiers on the squad, her attention suddenly fell on the dossier of one soldier in particular.

His name was Marcus Yun.

To her, Yun Ji-hun.

The director, standing nearby, began, "This man is one of the men assigned to the team. I understand that he is-"

"My brother," she breathed.

They had not seen each other in almost two years, but it wasn't just because of the secretive nature of his duties that limited how much they were able to communicate.

Personal strains aside, however, did not change the fact that he was her brother. Family.

But in the end, she made her decision.

"I have to pass, Director."

The older man sighed in disappointment, nodded in acceptance. "Very well. I'll walk you out the door. There's a personal transport outside ready to bring you home."

But as she stood at the door ready to leave the military complex, the director tapped her on the shoulder, put something into her hand without asking her if she wanted something first.

A small, indiscrete paper note, with a bar of numbers on it. "The number to call," he explained, "Should you ever change your mind."

"Thank you." Immediately after that she turned around and left the building without a second look back.

###

Her home in Seattle was an old, drab building that was covered all over with little cracks and cobwebs and the constant smell of something musky in the air. After staying silent through her whole trip with the military men and leaving without a word she curtly greeted the landlord, an old guy named Jerry on the way through, and she ignored the loud yelling coming from the couple a few rooms down hers' that seemed to be growing louder and louder with each passing month.

Despite the highly unusual events that had filled most of her day, the way she was ending it felt familiar.

Boring, almost.

When the lock acted a little funky, the door refusing to budge even as the key was turned all the way she frowned in frustration and more or less used brute force and kicked the door in.

She took her shoes off, put them on a rack next to a line of identical shoes.

Her apartment was drab, spartan, with little in the way of real self-expression. Like countless nights before the first thing she did was plop her prepackaged dinner into the microwave, itself leftovers from a meal hastily cooked earlier in the day. A bland dish of chicken breast and rice. One of her coworkers at the university had gifted her a cookbook for Christmas, a collection of Thai recipes, which she more or less abandoned to gather dust on a bookshelf. She ate to sustain herself, and didn't find flavor to be of any particularly high priority. Her sister had nagged her about that before, and she had finally agreed to spend a few hours learning how to make Mom's special kimchi recipe, not that she'd made it much after that. Hell, she'd probably already forgotten the recipe by now.

While her dinner was being heated she went to the bathroom to give her face a quick rinse.

Accidentally knocked over several bottles and tubes onto the floor.

She softly swore as she gathered up the fallen tube of toothpaste and the bottles of pills, both medical and psychiatric.

Hmm, maybe she should remind herself with a post-it to take her pills. She'd been forgetting to do that, not that she thought her medication really helped if another anxiety attack kicked in.

Pretty much the only reason she ate them was that it added yet another sense of routine to her life. That, and keeping Mitch from work happy.

Fuck, the cap of the diazepam bottle had almost come off.

Her microwave was beeping loudly to signal that dinner was done, and all it was doing was annoying her as she went to take her dish out to make it shut up.

Just all every other day before.

She watched TV as she ate, nothing on the news cycle really changing. Just endless channels of talking heads talking about politics and car accidents before going back to politics again.

Hmm, that documentary on whale intelligence did arouse her interest. But only for a moment.

Dinner was done and she went to do the dishes, selecting a playlist of calming music to play from speakers to keep her entertained while doing so.

When that was finished she briefly looked over the small collection of framed photographs that sat among the living room shelf. Little snapshots of her life, like the photo of herself uniformed and with her unit in the military police, another taken of that one day they came across a stray dog and it somehow became adopted and turned into the unit mascot. Others were of her family, her parents, siblings, vacation photos from the trip they took once to her ethnic homeland. She noticed one of them gathering dust and wiped it clean.

Two grownups and three kids. A family photo, her wide-eyed little sister Maggie and their scrawny big brother Marcus, Rachel awkward stuck in the middle with a face that told anybody watching that she'd rather be anywhere else other than here, and their parents, proud smiles on their faces only some number of years after moving from South Korea to the United States while she was a toddler.

There was a photo next to it of Marcus, the day before he was deployed to the American base in Korea.

The one next to that was her parents and Maggie, who looked as happy as she could ever be at her college graduation.

None of herself, though. She graduated from Berkeley but never bothered with the ceremonies, even while her parents egged her to go on with it. It was something she sometimes wondered whether she should have regretted.

She got a text while she was mopping the floors like the routine that it was. Her sister Maggie. Looked like she'd changed her profile picture, again. Now it was a picture of her looking down at her husband kissing his wife's very, very heavily pregnant belly. Brought back mildly bemused, mostly annoyed memories of the time Maggie posted a picture on them on social media with an arrow pointing to a very surprised-looking Rachel's face and going 'soon-to-be-Badass-Army-Aunt! (BAA) Yayyy!'

The text went, "OMG are you alright Sunhee?! Heard that you got kidnapped from your friends at work! O_O"

In other words, a typical text from her sister.

"I don't know where you heard that I got kidnapped, but I'm safe and sound, okay?"  
"Don't worry about your big sis Maggie."

Then after a moment, "Have you heard from Marcus lately?"

Yun Sun-hee, that was the first name her parents had given her. When she was a naive little girl she'd thought it was the name she would only tell a special someone, but eventually she changed her mind, decided nobody else outside of her family would ever know or use her native Korean name.

A reply from Maggie.

"Phew I was so worried about you!"  
"So is Ben."  
I know you work like a LOT but why don't you come down visit us for the weekend? We're doing BBQ!"  
"I havent heard from Marcus in awhile but he's like a top secret special ops badass, I know he can take care of himself! ;)"

"I'll text you if I can make it k?"

"Awesome! :D"

She put the phone into her pocket without much of an intention to actually go down to Los Angeles to visit her sister for the weekend. After all she'd already been egged god-knows how many times, time and time again to go visit and every time she said she'd think about it and Maggie would remain bubbly and optimistic even when Rachel never showed up. She'd noticed Maggie's optimism regarding her seemed to become more forced in recent times, as if she was trying to not be let down by consistent disappointment, but she never paid much mind to that.

When she entered her bedroom the bed was neatly done as if it'd been untouched.

Once upon a time her parents had envisioned getting a double bed for their daughter because they thought a husband would be inevitable. The pestering about whether she'd gotten a boyfriend yet dragged on through school. Even after learning certain details about their daughter they still insisted on it, going as far as to create and manage a dating profile for her to set her up with someone, and it wasn't until Rachel firmly insisted 'no' to them in person that they finally relented.

Still, the fact that she knew her parents were still disappointed in her even today, her sister's constant attempts to pull her in and give her more of a role in the family life and play up the 'badass aunt' image for her future niece or nephew, it did instill some tiny sense of regret.

Was it major? No, not at all. It was a small, fleeting regret about life that she would then forget about.

For hours afterwards she remained in bed with the table lamp on, catching up to the documents and research she'd missed out at the workplace. She made notes, circled annotations, and whenever she could occupied her mental space with research so she wouldn't have to think more about the things she truly wanted. And when there were too much of potatoes in her head she decided to stop and begin reading some science-fiction novel one of the interns had recommended, but even this she grew bored of quickly.

Eventually her thoughts began drifting to that of her brother.

They drifted to thoughts of the island.

The recording. The mysterious circumstances of the disappearance.

She wished she had brought back more documents from that military base to study and pore over, even if she would have been arrested for doing so.

The thoughts amassed into an amorphous haze before exhaustion claimed her and she drifted to sleep.

As with the routine she had developed the first thing she did upon waking up was to roll out the yoga mat, and spend half an hour doing yoga, something of a ritual to clear herself and get her mind and body ready for the day because she didn't believe in that spirituality crap. Then it was onto brushing her teeth, a hot shower.

Then like always she went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee.

So settled into her routine was she that her first thought was that she ought to get her cereal ready before driving to the university.

And with that, she froze.

Was this really want she wanted?

Just another day, the latest of countless, endless days of dull boredom, colorless monotone routine?

Another day of getting into well-tested, established research that didn't even do much to arouse her interest anymore?

Having to brace herself for an inevitable text or call from Maggie nagging her about coming to visit?

Or was what she wanted something far more important?

The mysterious island, with a mysterious investigation that itself became a mystery.

Unexplainable events, which even the top brass were at a loss to explain.

Her own brother, lost, potentially dead.

Her brother, that was the kicker that made her decide to just do it.

She waited, a long while, thinking, breathing slowly and deeply, before she called the number. She held her breath, waiting as the beeps went on and on and on before someone on the other end finally picked it up. If there was any emotion she was feeling at the moment, she was very good at hiding it.

"Yun?" the director asked, with a tone that she immediately could tell was feigned surprise.

Her reply was simple, went straight to the point.

"I've changed my mind. When do we move?"


	2. First Light

**First Light**

Introductions were swift, she didn't bother getting full names, or the details of everybody.

There was Clarke, the captain.

A heavyset-looking man Stone, whom she was told was something of a zoologist.

Lansing, a psychologist that the higher-ups wanted after getting worried about the apparent disturbing behavior shown by the transmissions.

Conrad, a biochemist who also had experience as a medic.

Emmerich, a virologist that they wanted for a reason that they simply gave as 'just in case', although Rachel had her obvious suspicions.

Arcady, a geologist that they wanted, again, for reasons they wouldn't specify.

And about 6 soldiers, whom she didn't bother getting to know at all.

Travel to the island was to take place by boat in the early hours of the morning, as bad updrafts prevented immediate travel by helicopter. The plan would be to make their way across the island to the original base camp set up by the previous team, gathering information as they go, and discover what exactly happened to the soldiers. The original team's mission objective, to investigate the disappearance of VIPs the guys at the top would not name, were to be considered a secondary objective, of lower priority at the moment. If everything went exactly as planned, the team would then radio for evacuation by helicopter.

"Standard-issue M4A1 assault carbine. Used one?" asked the armorer at the forward base camp. High command wanted everybody on the team to be armed after the disappearance of Alpha team, as they had to expect the worst. Another reason why they wanted even the consultants to have at least some military or special police operations experience.

She nodded as she checked over the mechanisms, tested the sights. She had never wielded the sleek compact assault rifle in a long time, but going over the procedures again, the training was now coming back to her. "I've got experience with numerous military-grade hardware. You don't have to worry about that."

The armorer nodded, more members of the team coming in to outfit themselves with automatic rifles, shotguns and carbines. A blonde woman, the psychologist apparently, looked nervous, in a situation far beyond her depth as she fumbled with her own assault rifle, accidentally sent panic when she unwittingly swept the barrel of a loaded weapon over the armorer while testingly aiming it.

"You never held a gun in your life?"

"Might come as a bit of a surprise, but no," she said, her accent that of a soft Texas drawl.

The armorer scowled, muttered something about why everyone on the mission was being expected to be armed even if they didn't have the proper training and qualifications. It was certainly something Rachel found curious, but not curious enough to seriously pursue.

For almost the entirety of the journey she kept herself in her cabin.

Meditating, for lack of a better word. Spending the hours in deep thought, endlessly going over the information that she had and applying new directions to it if she could, trying to prepare herself mentally as much as she could for the hours or possibly days to come. She simply could not rest easy, not knowing 'the facts' as they really were.

When she could, she tried not to think about what could have happened to Marcus.

A bout of paranoia and panic was not what she needed right now.

Someone knocked on the doors of her cabin. "It's Yun, is it?" A male voice, probably one of the soldiers.

"Yes."

"Just checking up on you. Everything alright?"

"Everything'll be alright when you leave me here by myself to collect my thoughts."

She didn't mean for it to come out as mean-spirited, though she got the impression that was how most people took the things she said.

He moved off, though as he did she heard him muttering something about the 'Chinese bitch', a technically inaccurate fact that she ignored.

According to the information on the briefing, it would be four more hours until they reached landfall and properly begin their investigation into what really happened to the men and women who vanished into thin air against all circumstances. Until then, she had the data logs to go through again and again and again.

###

The first thing she noticed was the cold.

She wasn't expecting the weather to be warm by any means, it was the early morning hours in the middle of October after all, but it was still far colder than she thought the weather would be. She could see the fog rolling off the waters into the island, her breath fogging over with each breath she took.

The sky was bathed in a dark blue, the treeline disappearing into complete blackness and hiding any semblance of possible dangers within. She had been provided with an automatic firearm on the knowledge that her training meant she would know how to use it, but she hoped she would never have to actually use it.

Soon enough the team of 13 men and women had disembarked from the boat, which itself was soon merely a speck on the horizon, growing smaller and smaller, until it completely vanished from sight.

When she was a child her uncle would often take her to the redwoods beyond her home of San Francisco during the weekends, and she would love those trips, always look forward to them, because unlike a lot of other people she often felt that her uncle understood her better than anyone at that age. Not even her parents were able to make her actually smile, laugh, or express herself in any way other than the stony bluntness that would make the other kids avoid her like the plague.

She liked her uncle because he would let her do whatever she wanted, let her roughhouse with the dog and chase squirrels into the grass and catch butterflies and beetles and frogs so she could observe them with wide-eyed fascination doing their thing in a glass bottle at home. Observing the way tadpoles grew legs and transformed into vastly different adult shapes and pondering with a child's imagination how and why was far more of a magical experience than anything the Disney movies could ever provide her.

Trekking through the woods, the dim blue of dawn piercing softly through the mist and the trees all did everything it could to remind her of those days, even if the circumstances were wildly different and far from feeling joy, all she could feel was an intensely analytical mood as she kept her hands ready to aim her assault carbine at all times, the boots making almost no noise as they squenched down on soft rain-soaked earth.

There was something that smelled heavy in the air, and she wasn't sure if it was just the smell of grass and rotting wood after a night of heavy rain.

"How long would it take for us to reach the camp?" she asked.

"If all conditions are ideal? A full day's hiking, but we should be able to reach it come nightfall," replied Captain Clarke.

"Since when are conditions ever ideal?" Conrad complained. Out of everyone in the group, he seemed the most relaxed, his assault rifle held almost casually.

"Keep your eyes peeled. Alpha team must have vanished for a reason. No way does a squad just vanish like that off the face of the earth without a damn good one," replied one of the 6 soldiers that she didn't bother getting to know.

"What do you make of all this, doctor?"

She continued walking on for almost a minute and it took her a moment of silence before she realized the question was directed at her, one of the soldiers staring at her and nodding as he walked. She blinked in surprise, fumbling for an answer to an unanticipated question.

"First of all, I'm not a doctor. Let me clear that up first. I graduated with a master's degree in genetic engineering and therapy but I never pursued a doctorate. Doing that's too much of a waste of my money and my lifetime that I believe is better spent elsewhere."

A chorus of murmurs, some in agreement and others in incredulity.

"And as for what I'm making of all this, I don't know. From what I've read of the details, none of this absolutely makes any sense. I need more data first before I can make a theory because forming a theory out of too little evidence is one of the worst faults you can make in scientific study."

"Isn't it obvious?" suddenly came a deep voice.

It was one of the soldiers in the back, a very tall man with a dark look in his eyes. Nobody else said anything as they listened with rapt attention.

"Biological weaponry." The tall soldier's voice was grim. "It's the only explanation that makes sense. This island was being used to test some kind of new bioweapon, probably a new breed of virus, and it swept through the team and slaughtered or mutated them too fast for them to tell us anything."

Murmurs of largely agreement, mostly through the 6 soldiers.

"That still doesn't explain the radio silence. If there are B.O.W.s involved in all this then why didn't we hear anything even though the radio signal was maintained for hours before going out?" said Rachel, mostly to deaf ears.

"We don't know that yet." It was the virologist, Emmerich who said that. "And we can't jump to conclusions. Yun's right. We have to secure more data before we can start forming a theory that makes sense."

"Thank you, Dr. Emmerich."

For what it was worth, the psychologist nodded to her in silent agreement too as they trekked on.

They didn't encounter any signs of activity along the way, no clues that a possibly hostile force could be occupying this island. There was a single ancient, rusting pickup truck lodged in the mud on what was once a dirt trail that was now overgrown with brush, presumably a structure that was once involved with the phosphate mining. Occasionally they'd see the remains of an electrical pole, wood rotting from years of disuse. Sometimes piles of unrecognizable but clearly man-made scrap. Trash. Only small things like that, indications that people had once inhabited this tiny island in the middle of nowhere.

But for overwhelming majority of it, the island almost seemed untouched. Vines, brush and flowerbeds were growing over the remains of human habitation, progress becoming consumed by nature.

"Beautiful," the psychologist Lansing breathed as they passed by a vast meadow. She was right, tiny flowers of all colors dotted the dew-covered grass, which swayed gently under the breeze. Distant trees obscured from their view by the mist. The sunlight piercing through the blanket of blue mist gave the meadow an eerie, but strangely, starkly beautiful quality.

"Never been to the outdoors much?"

"I've lived in Houston all my life. Couples years in Seoul, a week in Tel Aviv. Never had much of a chance," she replied in her soft Southern accent. She took a deep breath, smiling. "Not a single soul here. It feels so different from what I'm used to."

"There's us," Captain Clarke retorted, walking by and sparing only a glance at the meadow. "And possibly more. Don't let your guard down."

"I don't think there's much we can do to spoil the beauty," Lansing continued. She still seemed enamored by the sight of nature.

For her part Rachel bent down to more closely observe the grass. It was beautiful, yes, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary. She frowned – something felt off about the meadow.

"You noticed something?" she sniffed the air. "Nothing."

"You didn't notice anything?" Lansing asked, an eyebrow raised.

"No," Rachel said, annoyed. "Look at these flowers. Do you smell them? I don't smell them at all. Odd."

"I can smell the grass and the mud," said the geologist, Arcady after a moment. She was tall, looked mature with a brunette ponytail, toned muscles that told Rachel she had years of experience working in the field. She said nothing else, remained silent.

The three women consultants remained there for a few minutes more, simply watching the quiet, before they moved on with the rest of the group.

Desolate though the island seemed, they did stumble across a possible sign of big wildlife on the island – it was the smell first that got to them, and before long it was clear the rot was coming from the decaying corpse of a stag, rotting to the point that the skin and fur was now peeling away from the skeleton, exposing white bone that was starting to grow over with muddy yellowish fungal growths and mosses and lichen. But even decomposition could hide the massive bite marks and gouges and mauled the deer's side, the missing cavities where organs had been torn out and consumed. Strangely however, despite the horrendous smell and the advanced state of decomposition there were no scavenging animals that could be seen. No flies, no maggots, no ravens or rats.

The bite marks matched that of a grizzly bear, said Stone. A large, adult specimen, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Faces were cautious, but not particularly grim – nothing out of the ordinary, nothing they couldn't handle about a natural predator.

The forest remained bathed in eerie blue mist, dusty particles in the air shimmering as the thick earthy scent clung to the air.

###

She heard the sound first and was the first to snap up. In the great distance, somewhere amongst the trees and the mist came a single, mournful wail.

"Did you hear that?"

The group stopped. Listening. It was the first sign of life elsewhere on the island.

"It sounded like an animal. Maybe a dog."

She privately didn't agree. Too humanlike. Eerily humanlike.

"Didn't sound like a dog," said Stone, the zoologist. "More like a fox. The cries of red foxes can sound frighteningly human."

"Do you think it could be someone else? Another human?"

"Maybe one of Alpha team?"

They waited a long, long time to see if there would be another noise, but there was nothing else.

###

When Rachel woke up she didn't get up immediately. She remained where she was, in her sleeping bag, eyes shut as she went down her internal schedule for what her order of things to do were when she started the day.

The first of which was spending at least five minutes thinking over this schedule of starting the day.

Two minutes of thinking went by before her heart abruptly came to pause and she gasped in shock. Her eyes immediately cracked open and she jolted upwards from her sleeping position with a cold gasp.

She looked around herself. Tent. Morning light. The psychologist, the pretty blonde woman named Lansing, lying next to her in a sleep, garbed in olive green military wear.

"Something's wrong."

'Something's wrong' alone did not cover the magnitude of everything that she felt was wrong at that moment. Her hands reached out and she was shook Lansing violently, not caring that it felt like an immature action that was better taken by a girl in a sleepover.

"Lansing. Lansing. Get up!"

"What, what? My name's Karen, not Lansing. Lansing's what you call my mom," she complained like she was suffering a hangover, trying to pull herself away from Rachel's violent shaking. Rachel ignored that and eventually, she gave up on shaking and instead got up on her feet to give Lansing a hard kick in the ribs.

Lansing screamed, rolling over and gingerly touching her side before her eyes met Rachel's with a glare. "What the hell do you want, Yun?"

"Do you remember anything?"

She just stared back at Rachel with a dazed, confused expression like she was wondering what was wrong with her.

"Wait. What happened?"

She looked rapidly around the tent, like she was trying to check what exactly had gotten Rachel so agitated.

"What's wrong?"

"What's wrong? Everything's wrong. What do you remember last?"

"I… I remember that we were walking. Through the woods. It had been about two hours after we got dropped off at the beach? We were… well, the soldiers, we were talking about our theories about what happened here, Roger was saying he thought it was a new virus-"

"Do you remember how long Clarke said it would take for us to reach Alpha team's camp?"

"A full day, by nightfall."

"Exactly! So explain to me why are we sleeping next to each other in the middle of a goddamn tent!" It came out as a furious hiss that was struggling to comprehend the sheer oddity of what had just happened.

"…Yun, what are you talking about? We hit some delays along the way and made slower progress than predicted, but that's it."

The answer told her right away Lansing had no idea what could have possibly happened and with a muffled yell of frustration Rachel ran out of her tent to find herself in a camp, about 6 tents pitched in a semicircle. The last wisps of a campfire, presumably one they lit the night before with no memory of such continued to smolder and the thought that they could have done things like set up camp and light a campfire with gathered wood while having absolutely no memory of it was driving her crazy.

Now she was yelling at everyone in the tent to get up, and within minutes that was what happened. A while more went on as she rounded the camp asking everyone the same question, only to be met with mixed confusion and horror.

"What do you mean it's been two days!"

'What I mean, Yun," Captain Clarke said with a calm tone like he was disciplining an unruly child, "is that we hit a few snags during out trek to Alpha team's camp. Nothing serious, we didn't encounter hostiles, but we did find signs of recent activity. It's encouraging evidence, but these delays added up and we had to spend a night not anywhere near-

"That's impossible! I don't remember any of this!"

The look she got, as professional as it was, told her he thought she was crazy.

"I'll tell Dr. Lansing to evaluate you later," he began, clearly not believing her story.

But it was true that she had absolutely no memory of what had happened.

She last recalled them hearing a sound, a sound like an animal that someone theorized to be a fox, and then –

Nothing else afterwards.

Two days.

Two days with no recollection of what had happened.

It was disorienting, impossible.

"What about records, anything? Did we keep records of what's been going on?"

"What's going on with you, Yun?" Captain Clarke responded. "You weren't like this at all yesterday."

She didn't know to verify that because she didn't recall anything from yesterday.

But still, just to give her peace of mind, the captain ordered checks on the digital records that they had apparently made over the past two days, and the results were not what he had expected.

"It's corrupted."

"What?"

"Our digital journal! Records! The dates, entries, everything – its been corrupted and I can't fix it."

"What about the radio?"

The look that Simon the communications soldier gave (it suddenly struck her that Rachel had no recollection whatsoever of ever speaking to Simon nor explicitly learning his name) was one of frozen panic as he checked, only for it to cross over to a great look of relief. "We still got a line to the outside world."

"Communications?"

"That's the strange thing, sir. We've had a line open for days, but according to this there's zero records of communications between us and central command."

The blank, confused look he gave wasn't comforting at all. By this point Rachel had no idea if anybody on the team had recollection of actually communicating with central command, if this confusion was their response to finding out there were no records of communication whatsoever.

"Check our supplies," he then ordered to the man in charge of provisions.

The revelation was something they all found comforting except for Rachel, because it only told her she was wrong, that the rest of them were indeed correct in what they said.

Based on the amount of supplies that had been depleted, an entire two days really had passed. Two days of her life, that she had missed out on.

The radio's timestamps, when Simon managed to repair some of the corruption, only confirmed the grim fact that she didn't want to believe.

But the group's supply of ammunition led to a discovery that unsettled everyone, and not just Rachel. Their number of bullets, too, had gone down, which could only mean that at some point in the past two days found themselves in a combat situation where ammunition was expended against some unknown enemy.

She remembered Lansing explicitly telling her that they did not find themselves in hostile situations, but this evidence contradicted that.

What the hell was happening?

Their map coordinates, however, had survived unlike the rest of the digital records, but with this came the unpleasant reveal that they were nowhere even close to the original camp site of Alpha team. As a matter of fact, they seemed to have veered completely off course at some point, skimming the outer rim of the island instead of penetrating deeper into the center. How and why that had happened was anybody's guess, much less why nobody in high command seemed to inform them about it, and Arcady couldn't muster up any explanation that was satisfactory. Even when the others explicitly knew that two days of travel had gone by they couldn't figure out how to explain having messed up their directions so badly. In any case, it would take at least another day of trekking without obstacles in the way if they were to reach their original destination.

It was a bizarre situation that they had found themselves in, and it came with implications that honestly horrified Rachel to the core, though so far she still managed to largely keep it within herself.

###

"Captain, something's really hurting my leg."

Given that it was one of the actual soldiers who said it, whatever was happening to his leg must have really been seriously bad. It was about 11 in mid-morning when the group had to cross a relatively placid, freezing river, and in the hours of trekking through woods afterwards it seemed that everything then was going well until the soldier started aching, grunting in pain, and then before long it was clear that he was hobbling, and then finally Captain Clarke called for everyone in the group to stop because the soldier was obviously starting to have trouble breathing. His face was flushed with heat and sweat as he sat himself down on a log and declared his leg to be 'hurting'.

The medic Conrad had rushed over immediately, told the soldier to roll his pant leg up, and the sight that awaited everyone was disturbing.

At some point along the journey, the soldier must had gotten what seemed like a minor scratch on his ankle, but it certainly was not minor now. There were large, ugly sores on the soldier's ankle, surrounded by purplish bruising, and when Conrad's gloved finger touched one of the sores pus with the color of red mud oozed out of the wound. The soldier recoiled from the touch, opened his mouth as if to scream, only to then bite down on his forearm sleeve instead.

"It's not that bad," he tried to reassure a few seconds later, for the slightest of moments managing to force a smile onto his lips even as the bulging flesh surrounding the sores visibly twitched under Conrad's probes.

"Captain, I don't think continuing to move is the best choice. That wound is bacterially infected, no doubt about that, and if you wanted my honest opinion what he needs right now is an urgent visit to the hospital, but what we can do now is give him rest because he needs it. I'll be treating him as best as I can but he might also need surgery…."

For some reason Rachel had a feeling as she overheard Conrad's explanation to the captain that he was purposefully hiding or embellishing some parts of his diagnosis because the full extent of said diagnosis was really something he did not want the captain to know right this moment. In any case, the need and reason for the group to set up camp for the first time that they can properly recall was a good enough time for her to add to her journal. It was never something she had made a habit of, but after the phenomenon with missing two days of their lives there was the tinge of paranoia that the same thing could happen again, and she wasn't taking any chances.

So, the journal. A record of things that had happened just in case there was sudden amnesia.

###

The good thing was that she did not suffer any amnesia throughout the hours to come, as the sun set and night came over the island.

She did, however, suffer from insomnia. For hours Rachel did nothing but lie on her back staring wide-eyed at the tent's roof, going through every theory that she could possibly think of. And when she wasn't doing that, she was lying on her stomach reading through pages and pages of texts instead, again, trying to formulate a theory that made sense.

Nothing made sense about this case and nothing made sense about this island, nothing. A sudden bout of amnesia and distortion of the perception of time were not symptoms that she could recall reading about in the records of the various strains of the Progenitor virus and its effects, and just to be sure she had spent some of those hours going through all the books pertaining to the viruses that she borrowed from Emmerich. He had also recommended the infamous Kennedy Report, as well as more documents about the effects and symptoms of the parasite called the plagas, and again the symptoms didn't match.

The plagas, possibly, it had been noted that one of the effects of infestation in the original breed was the distorted perception of time, gaps of memory in the minds of the infested, and she certainly considered it was possibly – very unlikely, but possible – that there was a source of plaga spores that the group had inhaled at some point during their trek, but other than that the symptoms weren't the same. There was no subconjunctival hemorrhage, no feeling of tightening in the chest, and symptoms from a spore-breathed plaga weren't supposed to manifest so soon anyway.

So many blank factors.

She didn't even have time, mentally, to worry about what could have possibly happened to her brother, Marcus.

As much as she wanted to hope that he was still alive and well, that he was surviving even if the rest of his team had been slaughtered, truth be told, she was already expecting the worst.

Eventually even she began to get tired from her mind endlessly going in circles trying to understand the situation as best as she could, and she got up from her resting position. Keeping quiet so she would not wake up Karen Lansing who was able to sleep tight she exited the tent and sat herself down on a log, gazing off into the darkness of the treeline.

Strange. Even in the complete black of darkness there was still a faint, blue mist in the air, the kind that she felt was normally associated with only early morning light. She could even see the particles shimmering in the air like diamond dust, tiny and almost sparkly sources of light visible even in the dark.

It made her uncomfortable just looking at it, even as her mind told her it was just another oddity to add to the growing list of things odd about the island.

"Can't sleep either?" said a female voice behind her.

She didn't reply. Just leaned back and sighed.

"Well, neither can I," said the woman, apparently taking Rachel's silence as an affirmative. She sat herself down next to Rachel, and for what she felt was the first time Rachel really took her time this time to look at the woman up and down. Tall, light olive-skinned, black hair tied into a ponytail, stocky features, very beautiful she supposed, in that sweaty muscular athletic way. One of the soldiers that she never bothered getting to know. Matter of fact, she could recall that this soldier was the only woman among the actual regular soldiers in the team.

"I'm Sam, by the way. Sam Elhassan."

"Rachel Yun."

"Yeah, I know."

"What model is that?"

Rachel gestured at the shotgun that Sam stuck down on the ground, stock-first. It was all black, modern-looking, not a type she'd seen before even during her military service.

"Oh, this? FABARM FP6. Pump-action combat model with a Picatinny rail and a carbon finish."

"I see."

"You Army, Marines?"

"Marines, two years and counting. Before that I've got four years in the BSAA – spent two assigned to the Middle Eastern branch. Knowing how to speak Arabic is a big plus."

She flashed a toothy grin that looked proud of her years spent in service. It reminded her of a fresh-faced rookie or a spunky teenager and the thought of that was absurd given she had both an intimidating physical stature and was positively a qualified combat veteran to boot. It wasn't exactly what she expected.

Rachel just kind of nodded in acknowledgement.

Then silence.

"So, anything you feel like talking about?"

"Yes, but I don't think you're the person I want to talk to about it."

"Ouch. That hurts."

"Sorry," she apologized, though her tone was largely devoid of sincerity.

More silence.

Without being prompted, Sam began, "Believe me, this isn't the weirdest incident I've been involved in. Bunch of VIPs and then a squad of professionals going missing on an island doesn't compare to Rakwait, ever heard of it?"

She shook her head.

"Town in Syria that got hit with a biohazardous outbreak. I was with the BSAA then. Whole incident was threatening to erupt into an international fuckshow. We suspected Israel was testing a new derivative of the t-Virus on Syrian soil, the US administration was pressuring us to downplay possible Israeli connections and make sure it didn't get out to the media, the local rebel group was threatening us with war because to them, we were Western outsiders-"

She winced like using the word offended her on some level, "-poking our nose into their problem, we suspected the rebels themselves were hoarding looted mutagens and B.O.W.s, some terrorists were using the outbreak as an excuse to call for acts of vengeance in Israel, Hamas was all for it, the provincial government blamed it on the rebels instead, Russia got dragged into the affair because it was officially supporting the government and had to say it was possible 'an Israeli bioscience company' was involved, America denied Israeli involvement when the media finally got their hands on the story, Israel obviously denied involvement, then the Secretary of Defense flipped the script and said 'we're looking into it' even when the President was firm about his stance before, and to top it all off Israel sent their own special ops into the region to investigate, which opened up its own can of ugly geopolitical worms and conspiracy theories."

"So was Israel actually involved?" Rachel asked, mildly curious.

"The new virus was funded by a politically influential Israeli businessman and he used assets provided by politician buddies for what was basically a private venture, but the government itself had nothing to do with the scandal and as soon as the whole thing blew the state seized his assets and issued an arrest warrant, and he fled the country and got designated a bioterrorist, so technically, yes and no. Mostly no, not that it mattered much in the end. Oh, and the guy responsible for it all got caught in Singapore a few years later living under a false name. He got flown to Switzerland to stand trial for crimes against humanity but you still hear lots of certain groups claiming there's a lot more that got covered up by America, Russia, Israel, or whoever your current political target happens to be."

"Well, politics. I can imagine it was a fuckshow."

Total silence, she didn't feel like she could really add much to the conversation. Politics weren't really her thing. The only time when it was something she really thought about was if it happened to be getting in the way of research. Bureaucrats citing obscure laws that prevented her from doing one specific little thing, or being blocked from travelling to a biohazard site not because it was under biohazardous quarantine but because the regional government didn't want Americans 'meddling' in the area. It frustrated and infuriated her to no end whenever something as petty as bureaucracy denied her from carrying out research.

That was if the bureaucrats even recognized she was American in the first place, having lost track of the number of times she was mistaken for being a Chinese national while abroad simply because she looked East Asian.

"Did you get all of that?"

She shrugged, lied with a straight face. "Eh, mostly."

"…You're not really much of a conversationalist, aren't you?"

"Never considered myself much of a people person."

A deep sigh. The tension of having to guard the camp against unknown enemies in a strange environment while mostly having nothing to do was probably paradoxically both keeping Sam at high tension while also boring her out of her skull.

She heard Sam rubbing her hands almost excitedly.

"Alright, change of topics then. Wanna talk about love?"

"What about it? I broke up with my last ex 4 years ago and haven't looked back. Having a lover distracts me from the things I love about life."

"Well, we don't have to talk about the last one, then. How about the first? Tell me about your first love."

A few moments of quiet, she found herself looking wistfully at her boots.

"Oh? I know that look. You got a story, right?"

"…maybe. I don't know."

"I mean, you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

She rubbed the fingers of her right hand, thinking deeply. It had been a while since she was properly feeling like this.

"It was… at a ball. Summer ball. Celebrating the end of college."

She had attended the it only because it felt like an obligation, for all intents and purposes she was already ready to move on to the Army boot camp the next week.

"Go on."

"I'd never really known why people were so obsessed with love. Never thought I was the right woman for it. Too many complications. Too much human feelings."

It was true. All through high school and Berkeley she had found herself befuddled and bemused by all the people around her, including the few she actually considered friends, getting into relationships, and the nights spent with alcohol where she had to spend hours listening to them ranting to her about love problems while she herself had nothing to add or help.

"Hell, the only reason I lost my virginity was because I wanted to know what it was like."

David, the band bassist from Biology. He simply asked her if she'd done it, then he'd asked if she wanted to do it, and she said yes purely because she had free time and she was curious what it felt like. It had been a pleasurable experience but she didn't consider it a life-changing revelation, it was nothing exciting to her. Even a visit to a museum would have been preferable if it ever came down to it.

Beside her Sam chuckled.

"But on that night. I felt it, for the first time. That little spark, you know?"

She had been gazing outside for a long time, questioning why she even bothered to come to the stupid party in a dress she found uncomfortable to wear, surrounded by countless couples celebrating the end of their time in university. But when she turned from her lone place she saw that person for the first time and there was a drop in her heart.

"And I thought I understood then why love didn't appeal to me. On that night, all I could think of was that I was looking in the wrong place the whole time."

A tall redheaded girl with gorgeous velvety hair, a beautiful freckled face with a bright smile that could win over anybody, and a dress that drew attention to her curves in all the right places, including the cleavage that, yes, her eyes also ogled with no shame.

"Her name was Sue and when we locked eyes I knew I was feeling love for the first time in my life."

"Oh. So you swing that way, huh?"

She chuckled for what was probably the first time since she signed on to this mission.

"Yep, I guess I do."

They approached each other immediately. Talked to each other about boys and giggled at the attempts by men to try to woo them. They danced among all the other couples in the ball.

"We kissed that night."

"Among other things?"

She made a short, rare giggle as she thought about that night. "Yeah. Among other things."

And just like that, it ended. Her smile slowly becoming a sad, wistful frown tinged by bitterness.

The memory of seeing Sue the next morning walking away holding hands with someone else, the realization that she didn't see Rachel in the same way she did, that she was only ever a one-night stand to Sue, it was all a hard reminder to her of the many reasons why she simply didn't get the appeal of love.


	3. The Camp

**The Camp**

"How's the leg?"

The wounded soldier groaned in pain, massaged the yellowed bandage tenderly through his gritted teeth. "I've been through worse situations, Yun. Don't you worry about it."

There was no amnesia amongst anybody in the group the next morning, not that she was aware of at the very least, and at the very least that was something she was thankful for. The same could be said of the soldier with the bad leg, for what it was worth. Conrad said that he could walk, and because of that evaluation alone the wounded soldier was insisting that they could now continue.

His name, it turned out, was Andre, and through their woefully short conversation she learned that as bad as the wound seemed to be it wasn't the worst Andre had experienced, there was a hellish time he fell from a cliff while hiking alone in the Wyoming wilderness and had to limp his way back to civilization for a whole three days.

An interesting story, but Rachel was still perfectly blunt when she blurted out, "I'm afraid I'm gonna have to be worried, Andre, because your leg looks a hell of a lot more awful infected and oozing pus than it does being broken."

The soldier's response was to laugh before groaning as he forced himself to stand up on shaky legs that looked like they were being put through a tremendous amount of pain.

"Come on, let me-" she began, reaching out to help hold onto one of Andre's arms to support her. But the soldier immediately brushed her away. "No, I can do this," he said through gritted teeth, his pride clearly preventing him from accepting any kind of help or support. With that Rachel stood there, staring as Andre clearly struggled through the act of walking and feeling rather helpless but at the same time, too unfeeling to do much of anything about it. There wasn't really much anything she could do to help someone who didn't want her help and because of that she just stared.

"How did you get wounded in the first place? Tripped somewhere?"

"Beats me," admitted Andre. "Must have scratched it somehow while we were wading through the river and it got infected."

The most likely explanation, true, but it didn't fully explain everything, something she kept to herself.

Perhaps it was the sheer number of unknown factors involved, perhaps it was just the thought that it was very possible she was going to die a horrible death during this mission because of said unknown factors, but Rachel spent the morning finally trying to make an effort to talk to the soldiers who were actually providing the muscle for the team.

For the better part of the past hour she went around talking to them. Or at least she tried to, because how it turned out in practice was that she'd just walk around and stand there at a fair distance staring coldly while wracking her brain over what to say. Apparently her perception by the soldiers was still that of an icy, unfeeling bitch, not that she blamed them for thinking that since for the most part she considered it true. Wouldn't be the first time she was regarded as such either, but she saw no point to trying to ensure the label wouldn't be used for her again.

"Look who decided to join us," was the first thing one of the soldiers said to greet her when she approached. She said nothing about the patronizing tone, just sat herself opposite the man. He was fairly short, wearing a military cap that covered his blond buzzcut hair.

"I'm Rachel," she began. "I don't think we got introduced."

"I know your name. All of us needed to. Guess that's enough of an introduction."

"Mike, she's just trying to make friends. Oblige her for a minute," called out one of the other soldiers from within his tent. He poked his head out, looked at her with a smile that passed for cheerful. "Hey, Yun? I'm Brock, Brock Casey. It's nice to meet you."

He extended a friendly handshake.

Quickly glancing up in Brock's general direction she said a dispassionate, "Yeah," before turning back to Mike, ignoring the offered hand. "So you're Mike? Pleasure to meet you," she said to the buzzcut soldier.

He scoffed. Said nothing for a moment before turning to her and simply saying, "Yeah."

She sat there on her spot for a few seconds before changing locations, scooting over to park herself next to him. "Tell me more about yourself." The tone sounded more like a command directed at a machine than it did a question.

"You clearly didn't see any value in making friends before and now you want to make friends with us? Open your eyes, Yun. We're not going to be friends, but I can't deny that you're a valuable member of the team."

It took her a moment before she realized the man's voice sounded slightly familiar. "Did we meet before?"

"Yeah, I came to check on you on the boat."

"…oh."

He tossed a pebble in front of him, before looking up at her and offering a hand. "But hey, we're two professionals here working together, huh?"

"Of course, we are." This hand, she took and she shook.

There was no warmth or sincerity from either of them but that was fine.

###

They heard it again, the distant echoing howl that could be an animal, could be a man, a woman, something else entirely. And just like the first time it came down to nothing, and the unit continued to move on.

The more Rachel thought about it, the more she was convinced it was no ordinary animal, at the very least.

When they finally reached it they couldn't be surprised with what they found, but the results were disappointing nonetheless.

"Now what the hell happened here?" remarked Captain Clarke as the unit approached the location on the map. The forward base site set up by Alpha team.

It seemed to have been a forest cabin that was already being consumed by nature before all this, vegetation having overgrown the roof and eaten into a gaping hole in the wall, but even then the evidence of recent military activity in the area was obvious, as was the fact that it was now a derelict. Tents were torn over, critical equipment strewn everywhere and totally wrecked beyond usage, black scorch marks that could only be explained as the results of uncontrolled explosions.

Creelman - again, she had no recollection of personally learning the tallest soldier's name - bent down, his expression critical. He pressed his hands down on the earth, examined the spent bullet casings that littered the ground. 5.56 hollow-point ammunition, the same caliber that the standard-issue M4A1s were chambered in. "They were fighting something."

She found it odd Alpha team was apparently issued with hollow-point ammunition, but didn't say anything about it.

Captain Clarke sighed in disappointment. "Sweep the area. Look for clues about what could have happened to our men."

What clues they could find spoke of a situation that didn't just spiral out of control but was already well on its descent beforehand.

The footprints in the dirt didn't just show that of combat boots, but also footprints of barefooted people, sometimes in close proximity with the booted footprints.

There were dried bloodstains that they could find, splashed across the wreckage of equipment.

Some of said equipment seemed to have been damaged in combat, but strangely enough others could only be suffering critical damage that could be said to have been self-inflicted. Sabotage, it seemed, had occurred to some degree. Who and why, they didn't know, and it didn't matter now.

She found Mike, the blond buzzcut soldier kneeling by a spot in the side surrounded by tall grass and ferns. He seemed to be closely focused on something on the ground.

"Mike? You found something?"

He said nothing, but made a sign of the cross.

She looked down and saw why immediately. Before him was a mound of earth, recently dug, and somebody had taken care to tie together two twigs into the approximate shape of a cross before sticking them into the mound. A fresh grave, for a casualty on Alpha team.

So now they knew there were already casualties before whatever happened at the forward site itself. But that still didn't answer a lot of things.

Rachel was the first to enter the ranger cabin. Making sure to have the barrel of her rifle pointed in first she slowly opened the door, coughing from the golden diamond dust that crusted off the hinges. For a reason she couldn't speculate on it seemed Alpha team had not actually entered or used the cabin at all, otherwise the door would have shown signs of recent use.

It was dark inside. A musky smell in the air. Yellow dust shimmering in the dark. Just as she thought, it appeared nobody had entered the cabin in ages.

She could feel no signs of life inside the cabin, but still she kept her guard up as she entered one of the rooms, and immediately her attention was drawn to the small black box sitting atop the table. Slowly she approached it and picked it up.

An audio recorder. Modern, military issue. This definitely came from Alpha team.

Hesitating before she did so, she pressed the button.

"_Definitely a fuck up, I can't think of anything else to describe it."_

She gasped. Almost dropped the recorder from her hands.

It was her brother's voice. Marcus. Marcus made this recording. Scrambling back to full attention as quick as she could she listened intently.

"_Alpha Team has suffered massive casualties. Roger, Kellen, and I are the only ones left alive. Patrick, Sewall, Brenner, and Carton are dead. The rest are MIA. I don't know what's happened to them or where they've gone. Have to be assumed dead or worse. _

_We shouldn't have come, right from the start, but now we're going to pay the price. I guess we all knew that anyway, not like any of us signed on to this trip expecting a ticket home. We've come too far to go back. We can never go back, but that's okay. Made peace with it all already. We must finish this. Return to the source. To the Garden, belly of the beast. End it from within."_

The recording seemed to pause for several long, unnatural seconds. No sound of breathing, no audio whatsoever, before the noise began to pick back up.

_"And if any of you guys at base camp find this, I've got a message for my little sister. Hey, Rachel. Hope you don't mind me calling you a sneaky little rat one last time. I know you probably don't give a shit what happens to me and I can't blame you. But I know what you're like. It is inevitable that your snoopy little ass will find out what happened here, and this message too. Hell, there's a good chance you're one of the guys listening to this right where I left it in this hut. But I have to say, please, little sis – listen to me just one more time. Don't let your hunger for knowledge get the better of you. You have no idea what you're dealing with here. The genie has to be kept in the bottle._

_And if you really are on this island right now then please… please. Turn around, and leave, and never come back. _

_Oh hell. Darren..? My head hurts. This place, this place will reduce you, make you lose all sense of who you are in this place. So please turn around and go home-"_

The recording never got to its end, static abruptly corrupting the audio for several seconds more, before it finally cut to nothing.

For several seconds, she simply stood there, looking down at the recorder, what was very likely one of the last messages her brother left.

And she found herself short on breath, backing up against the wall, before sliding down on her back and trying to hold back the tears.

###

"They tell me… you were the only one to hear that recording, before the recorder broke." Captain Clarke bent down, made sure to look her at eye level. "What did the recording tell you?"

She found herself unable to answer for a moment, almost unable to breathe, before she stabilized her thoughts and was able to reply.

"There were only three survivors at that point. The way he put it, it was like they were expecting casualties right from the start. He said… he said they were heading towards 'the source'. Called it 'the Garden'." She shook her head. "I don't understand what he was trying to say."

"Neither do any of us, Yun."

"Did they find any members of Alpha team? Bodies, dog tags?"

He shook his head. "Not a trace. Aside from the casualty they buried there's nobody else around here. We still have us 19 missing soldiers."

"What are they gonna do with the body? The buried soldier."

The look in his eyes was genuinely mournful.

"We're going to tag his location. When all this is done and over we'll be recovering his body to send it home."

"Do I have permission to exhume the body?"

Perhaps she should have taken the regret on his face more into account because the moment her words left her mouth he looked horrified.

"What? Why?"

"There are things that I want to analyze. Brought my equipment here for a reason."

"You don't have a background in forensic science," he pointed out. "Nothing about you is qualified for performing an autopsy."

She shrugged. "Maybe. But I do have a background in genetics. And it's not the body itself I want to examine – it's the bloodstream."

From his perspective there was no real reason to check on the soldier's body or DNA. He was a casualty under mysterious circumstances that were assumed to be of mundane origin. But the presence of hollow-point ammunition, the signs of the skirmish that happened around the site that suggested whoever attacked them did so at a melee range, it all fed into one disturbing conclusion.

His response was direct and immediate.

"Permission denied. Sorry, Yun."

She held a hand to her forehead like she was warding off a headache. No bodies meant no direct confirmation or examination of the theory that she had been developing in her mind after examining all the clues thus far.

But that brought up another thing she'd been bothered by, and which also contributed to the mystery she wanted to correlate with the soldier's body.

"I noticed something about the shell casings Alpha team left behind, Clarke."

"Evidence of a combat situation," he declared, his face grim. "We must be prepared for the same.

She shook her head. "I'm not talking about that. The casings were that of hollow-point ammunition." She tilted her head slightly, allowed a cool and emotionless look to pass over her face. "Why was the unit issued with hollow-point ammunition?"

Hollow-point ammunition was noted for their ability to expand on impact with a soft tissue target, causing massive trauma in the wound cavity. The mushrooming of the bullet would also cause hydrostatic shock that was able to disrupt internal organs, causing even greater lethality. However, a known point about hollow-point bullets was this same expansion of the bullet would cause it to break up if it impacted things such as ballistic armor, drastically reducing the bullet's penetrating power.

Additionally, various international conventions had banned the use of expanding ammunition, and the U.S. military had refrained from its usage, citing the risks and unnecessary suffering that would be caused by using it in an antipersonnel context. However, one certain international military organization had permission by the UN to use hollow-point ammunition, and they were an organization that regularly faced combat with soft, organic targets that weren't known for wearing ballistic armor.

Only the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance was known for their extensive usage of antipersonnel hollow-point ammunition in anti-B.O.W. operations.

In the context of modern warfare, hollow-point bullets were a shorthand for a surefire encounter with monsters.

She gave him a cold, steely look in her eyes as she awaited an answer. She wondered whether Clarke would realize she noticed this detail – whether he would forget that the civilian consultant who worked in breeding potatoes was once stationed in the Army, stationed in a city where she had once seen the aftermath of BSAA activity.

"We are allowed to use them, are we not? We're not bound by the laws of the Hague Contravention. Munitions of hollow-point ammunition can be found in our armories," He suggested, trying to recontextualize the question.

She could plainly see what he was trying to do.

"I've never heard of hollow-point bullets being used on any official capacity in the U.S. military, Clarke, let alone on a black operation on American soil to search for missing VIPs."

"You said it yourself. Covert operations are classified." The captain leaned back against the wall of the tent. "What weapons and equipment are used in classified operations aren't things the public needs to know."

"What I'm curious in, Captain Clarke," she pronounced his name and rank slowly, drawling it out, "is why this unit was issued with hollow-point ammunition when the only military organization that consistently uses this ammo in live combat today is the BSAA."

He said nothing. She continued.

"Reason why the BSAA uses hollow-point bullets is because they're especially effective against unarmored, fleshy targets. Zombies, lickers, tyrants, las plagas, chrysalis mutations, irregularly mutated wildlife," she listed off her fingers, raising each one by one. "B.O.W.s. I'd imagine nobody else would use hollow-point bullets, unless, of course, they already knew they were going to go up against B.O.W.s."

A long period of silence, the two of them staring each other down. She could tell the gears in his head were turning, as he considered how to deal with someone who had clearly figured out information that his superiors did not want anyone lower down to know. He returned with his own steely hard-eyed look.

"That's an interesting theory you've got there, Yun."

"Thank you."

"Well," he began. "There are some things we are dealing with, that have to be on a need-to-know basis, you know. You don't have authorization to know everything and I don't have authorization to tell you why. Certain details of this mission must be kept classified – I'm sure you read that in the briefing."

"I sure have, Captain." Her voice was slow, deliberately punctuated. "The need for secrecy and classified information. Yeah, I completely understand."

In the end they relayed the news - after delays due to a disruption in the radio signal - to central command, who grimly acknowledged there was a possibility Alpha team was wiped out, but ordered that the mission continue as planned in the event of this discovery, that they now investigate what caused the destruction of the unit.


	4. Monsters

**Monsters**

When she got into the tent later in the evening Lansing was sitting on her knees and had her eyes closed like she was in a meditative state, which wasn't like her. Then again, she didn't actually know what kind of habits or quirks Lansing often had, it just so happened this was the first time Rachel was seeing her like this.

"Lansing?"

Silence like she didn't even hear her voice. Then in a hushed voice, "Yeah?"

"You alright?"

A few more moments before she finally opened her eyes, releasing herself from her strange trance. "Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"

She did not look 'alright' in the slightest. Lansing looked exhausted. Her skin was pale, sweat going down her face, and the bags under her eyes looked positively panda-like.

They both paused to look up as a great moan of pain came from another tent. Andre's voice, followed by the voice of Conrad the medic. She wasn't surprised the bad leg was still continuing to be a problem, though the fact he refused to let it hold down the team was both admirable and very stupid, her opinion mostly sliding towards the latter.

She ignored the sounds coming from the other tents and took out her journal instead, jotting down her records of the day. Just because there were no obvious memory gaps recently did not mean she was going to ever feel safe.

"You know, I've been thinking about things," said Lansing.

Lansing's voice was different tonight. Didn't sound as frivolous, childish, drunk, as mind-boggling as that seemed. She seemed, for once during their nights spent together in the tent, completely lucid and serious.

"What you been thinking about?" She didn't look at Lansing, just continued writing on her journal while she listened.

Lansing took a deep breath before she continued.

"You ever had any people that, you know, you've got regrets with?"

Sue went through her head.

As did Marcus.

Then again, aside from Captain Clarke nobody on the team really knew about the personal stake she had in this mission.

"Not really, no."

Lansing frowned. "I remember reading on your dossier, that you were deployed in Kabul back in 2008?"

"That's right. Army, military police."

If she wanted to know if there were any people she met during those three years she spent in Afghanistan that she had 'regrets' with – there were none.

Lansing seemed to pick up at that, nodding at Rachel's pointed stare. Without being prompted she started talking about herself.

"I was a counselor – I guess I still am - Department of Veterans Affairs, the office in Houston. And the soldiers that I'd met, talked to, well, I'm pretty sure you know. Brought back with them a bit of the war they came back from. I've met all kinds of people. Heard all kinds of stories."

There was a deep, reflective look in her eyes. Regret, perhaps.

"You ever lost anyone?" Lansing asked, her voice low, a little trembling.

"I don't need any psychiatry now," was Rachel's blunt reply.

Lansing snapped, looking irritated and more than a little offended. "That's not the point I'm trying to make, Yun."

She raised her hands apologetically, something Lansing seemed to accept.

Then in a low voice of her own, she replied, "Every soldier loses someone."

Whether it affected them as much as others did was another story altogether. She thought about it sometimes. Maybe it did get to her, every now and then. But never by much.

Lansing looked away. Rubbed with a raw edge at her eyes.

"This… this one story. It still gets to me, you know?"

"Tell me."

"There was a guy who came into the office once. Name of Francis. Army. Now Francis was a good man, alright? He had a good record, led a bomb defusal team in Iraq with minimal casualties. And he tells me how in one day he was patrolling some town looking for IEDs when, under half an hour, he lost his entire team."

She pointed at the air, slid her finger downwards at an angle as she made a small whooshing sound, a pantomime of a firing bullet.

"Insurgent sniper," she explained.

Rachel said nothing. Listened.

"Guilt. He couldn't stop thinking… that he should have done things differently. Maybe if he'd gone in that direction, maybe if he'd used a shinier distraction… he couldn't help but keep thinking over a thousand different little factors that he believed could have reduced casualties. I told him – like I told everyone else who came home – that it's okay to share the baggage. That all of us are here to support them no matter what. That our family and loved ones will always cherish us."

Her voice became softer, quieter.

"Now Francis, he takes all that to heart. He made another appointment on the next week, went home. And what did I find out the next morning?"

"What happened?"

There was a look of deep regret and she turned away from Rachel. "He was arrested. Police were charging him for domestic abuse and second-degree assault. His wife, he'd been away from home for years and she was fucking another man and when he found out-" She broke off, unable to continue.

She whispered her next words. "I tried to find him again after all that, after prison time, but he disappeared. Later on I found out he was a drunk and an addict. Tracked him down to a bar in a shit town and he broke down in front of me and… I should have done more."

"I should have done more, because the next time I'd heard about him he'd put a gun to his head and fired."

Her head was bent low, fists clenched and clutching at both sides of her skull. "I should have done more," she repeated. "Should have done more."

Rachel said nothing.

Then she put hand on Lansing's own. After a moment, Lansing grabbed it.

"I'm sorry."

She sighed deeply.

"And now I don't know if I'm being haunted by my demons or whatever, but I keep hearing his voice, you know? I keep hearing him confessing to me, he'd been done terrible things and he's so sorry for everything he's done, and-"

Broke off into nothing.

"Shh."

With her other arm she laid it on Lansing – Karen's – back and patted it in support.

All she could do was shush her and pat. What the hell else could she do? She never considered herself the best kind of person to go talk to about personal problems.

If anything she was terrified that she might say something wrong that would just deepen the trauma and remorse that the psychologist was feeling now.

So in the end, she said nothing.

###

That night she found herself, just like the previous nights, unable to sleep as the hours dragged on.

It wasn't that she was even keeping herself awake to pore over theories and analyze new information she had gained, or even that she couldn't sleep because thoughts of Marcus were filling her mind. Rather after what she had heard in the recording and all the implications therein, tonight she actually did want to get some rest because she realized she needed it and wouldn't be able to function at full capacity if she didn't get sleep, but for the past several hours getting rest had been supremely difficult.

She wasn't even completely sure why. It could be because of the headache she had been suffering tonight, just a small bout of nausea in the back of her skull that made her feel like there was something in her head that she wanted to rub out but couldn't. If it wasn't the headache then it was just fear.

Finding her heart pounding, cold sweats developing over her skin as she found herself unable to break away from a train of thought that was doing nothing but thinking about things that could have possibly happened. Fears that she might lose her memories. Fears about the fate of her brother. Guilt about how she had internalized finding her brother. The heart-to-heart that Karen suddenly poured out on her after being revisited by her past's demons. Her own increasingly growing suspicions that Alpha Team did not come to this island to investigate and rescue VIPs that the higher-ups would not name. The possible presence of bio-organic weapons on this island.

Or even just a cold sinking feeling of fear that she couldn't explain at all.

It was paranoia, she told herself over and over, but that didn't help her get rest at all. It didn't help that Karen was making very upsetting sounds and Rachel could pick up on all of it.

It was subtle, but she could hear Karen whimpering and twitching in her sleep like she was experiencing a terrifying nightmare. Rachel felt tempted to reach out and physically comfort her but decided not to do it, on the grounds that it might awaken her. Karen needed the sleep.

Every now and then she could hear footsteps over the sound of the forest breeze, soldiers keeping guard over the camp and changing their shifts.

At long last, she endeavored to make herself fall asleep by listening in on something repetitive. Maybe water dripping from something, the sound of chirping crickets. She would make herself focus on Karen's snoring only if it was absolutely necessary.

No sooner than a minute passed before she realized something that made her heart race again in worry and fear.

She couldn't believe she never noticed it at all for the past day she could remember, but she couldn't hear any life from the forest.

No birds.

No frogs.

No insects.

Aside from the wind and the rustling of leaves and trees the forest was dead silent.

There was the deer skeleton they stumbled across, clues that pointed to a large predatory animal, but that didn't answer the question of where was all the wildlife on this island?

Fresh footsteps. Sounded like the guard shift was changing again. Two soldiers standing outside their tent, and they were starting to speak, in low whispers, probably so that they wouldn't awaken anybody else.

Over her life she had made it a small habit of hers to eavesdrop on conversations. It was never a big deal to her, just a way of picking up information that she might otherwise not receive. The voices were fairly muffled through the fabric of her tent and she wasn't able to recognize the voices other than the fact that they were both male, but she was able to piece out the words being spoken and just to distract herself from oncoming fear and a panic attack she decided to focus in on what the soldiers were talking about.

"You have any family waiting for you back home?"

"Oh hell yeah. Got a wife, two kids."

"What's the woman's name?"

"Helena."

"Funny," the other man chuckled in amusement. "My wife's name's Helena too." She didn't think much on that, and was actually feeling slightly annoyed the men were talking about their wives instead of something that she could find useful. Never quite understood the appeal of families, anyway. She'd rather be free to pursue the things she truly loved than be tied down.

"Isn't that a coincidence?" the other soldier laughed too in agreement. "We met in Los Angeles, somewhere around the Sunset Boulevard. You know, she was just a tourist from Colorado at the time.

"Wait a minute," interrupted the other soldier, his voice graver and more serious this time. "My wife was a tourist from Colorado too. We met when she was giving directions to a bunch of Chinese tourists."

"Wait, I must have told you this story," flustered the other soldier, panic creeping into his tone. "I picked a fight with her because she was giving the wrong directions-"

"The tourists wanted to visit the Walk of Fame, she was pointing them down a completely different street and I overheard that-"

They both stopped, as the realization slowly came upon both of them. Rachel, too, now found herself listening intently rather than simply putting it to the background of her attention, her mind now digesting this bizarre new information.

Never in all her life had she ever heard of a case of two people simultaneously sharing the same memories, and of having the exact same wife no less.

"That's impossible."

"Fuck you. Helena's my wife, no fucking way can we remember the same thing," he said, to Rachel's own agreement. "I know my Helena and you weren't fucking there! When I saw her she was wearing-"

"A yellow summer dress? A straw sun hat with a pink flower?"

Silence, Rachel's breath quickening as her eyes widened in disbelief at the level of detail to which the memories, somehow, were being shared between the two different individuals and being perceived by each of them as their own. She rubbed at her chest, feeling her heart pounding again.

Deep breaths, she forced herself. Deep breaths. Trying to stem back the panic so she could focus on the thing that she needed to properly analyze in her head.

What did it mean? The implications were horrific. Was one soldier's mind bleeding into the other, or were the minds of the two being melded instead, fused into one? Was if possibly affected the rest of the men?

What if her own mind and memories were being tampered without knowing it?

The more clues she picked up about what had happened on this island the more the rational part of her screamed to leave as soon as possible, the part that wanted her to freeze up in panic and paranoia. But the curiosity was too strong, this knowledge too raw and too new to just abandon.

She needed to know more. The scientist in her needed to learn more, to turn this unknown, terrifying factor into something rational that could be understood, if only to sate her thirst.

What if her own memories of the past few days were not her own at all?

Her finger thumbed the survival knife that was kept in a holster on her pants. She ran it along the serrated edge of the blade.

The pain felt real.

The snapping of branches, somewhere off in the distance.

Immediately the soldiers' voices stopped. She could tell they were both spooked by the single bit of noise.

More soft cracks, coming from different points but from the same direction. She could hear something that causing rustling, and the only thing she could think of was a fox or some other small animal moving through underbrush. She didn't have any inkling of what the sources of those could possibly be, not when she realized there seemed to be no wildlife at all on the island.

And there was the sound again. The distant, screaming noise that had been assumed to be a fox. Only this time, it sounded a hell of a lot closer than before.

Footsteps, moving away. The soldiers moving closer to check on the disturbances, leaving her to herself.

For a time, nothing.

The scream came again. Now it sounded close enough that it could actually be in viewing distance from the camp.

Karen shuffled in her sleeping spot, the noise loud enough to disturb her now.

Then suddenly, the eruption of chaos.

The sounds came loudly and suddenly and within moments there was frantic movement, everyone in the camp had awoken and was responding to the unmistakable crack of close-range gunfire coming from the approximate direction of the two men and the distant cracks and rustles in the forest.

And she heard it. Echoing through the open forest were the rustling of footsteps running through brush and grass, far more than just one by the sounds of it, and then screaming. Disturbingly human-like yet animalistic screams that reverberated through the night.

She grabbed the assault rifle that laid next to her and ran out of the tent to the sight of pops of light as gunfire went off, streaks of tracer sounds flying through the air. And the beams of flashlights confusedly waving about to see where their attackers were coming from, the flashes of light from the gunfire all briefly exposed for only glimpses at a time humanoid figures that were rushing at the camp screaming, their arms open in a wild flail and mouths agape.

It was the beginning of a confusing, terrifying battle.

Tracer rounds flashed wildly through the air, screams and yells echoing as the unprepared soldiers fired wildly into the attackers. She could catch glimpses of 8, maybe 10 figures in green charging them, the screeching coming from multiple directions. More still seemed to appear from the trees, not stopping in momentum even as their forms stumbled and tripped over obstacles in their charge, not stopping as bullets perforated their flesh. Not even shotgun pellets seemed to stop them, only causing them to stumble in their steps. It was not the unified charge of a pack animal – the humanoid creatures were a mass of individuals each driven by their own instinct to tear and devour.

Two of the things were bending over one of the soldiers, she couldn't tell who as her flashlight shined over them, he was still twitching and screaming even as they ripped his stomach open to tear out his guts. And instead of eating they both turned to look at her with wide, staring eyes and immediately abandoned him, leaving their victim still lying there and screaming as she spat assault rifle fire at the creatures. She could hear Creelman screaming as his form crumpled to the ground, blotches of red appearing on his form. Lansing yelled at the top of her lungs as she sprayed assault rifle fire into the things, but untrained in actually using the weapon she wasn't prepared for the recoil, and her bullets went wide and missed her targets – and a look of panic came upon her when the gun clicked dry after shooting it nonstop for four seconds.

The creatures didn't even seem to notice the bullets impacting them and collapsed like puppets whose strings have been cut when she had filled them with enough to empty her rifle. In a dazed panic she reloaded the magazine, barely noticing as the tracer rounds whizzed inches away from her head.

One of the monsters was screeching inarticulately, the head of a man in olive green being held in its hand as it swung him against a tree trunk. Blood and fragments of skull splattered against the wood, the creature frothing at the mouth and continuing to bash its victim even as it was clearly limp and dead.

Shining her flashlight and assault rifle over it she could see it seemed to be garbed in a tattered uniform and, aware of the pitiful stopping power the 5.56mm rounds had from shooting the two monsters, she aimed for the legs instead.

The response was immediate, the creature collapsing as the knees snapped like twigs under the impact of bullets, exposing oozing muddy flesh and splintered bone. Even then it barely seemed to realize it, still moaning and pitifully attempting to crawl over to its new target as blood spurted from its wounds.

She slowly walked up to it, earlier panic now replaced with cool logic and rifle carefully aimed, before firing a three-round burst into its skull.

The creature fell limp, blood and brain matter now splattered all over the earth.

Confusion was now giving way to focus as the soldiers collectively realized what kind of enemy they were facing, and were reacting accordingly. Targets were acquired one-by-one, put down with far more bullets than it would take to kill an ordinary man. One was killed instantly when his head was blasted with a shotgun at practically point-blank range, leaving nothing of his head aside from a flopping lower jaw.

And it was over. Men were still shouting incoherently but the inhuman screams of the monsters had gone.


	5. Postmortem

**Postmortem**

The site was already beginning to fill with the stench of rot by the time the sun brought light over the horizon.

She sighed at the work ahead.

Eight bodies laid before her, in various stages of bodily mutilation but already beginning to bloat with gases. If they were seen at a glance in the distance it was easy to mistake them for human, and it was obvious they were once human – they were still garbed in tattered and bloodstained clothes, military uniforms. Some of them even still like sidearms in their holsters, dangling by the side of their belts. It was only up close and in the details where one would realize that these were not men, but monsters.

The faces on those who still recognizably had heads were contorted in expressions of agony even in death. Their skin was corpse-pale, but there was a lack of rot on the epidermis that ruled out the t-Virus as a possible vector. Across their bodies she could see twisting vein-like protrusions under the skin, a soft pale white in their color, spread out almost like plant roots. There was no point of concentration for these veins, in one it seemed especially concentrated around the neck but in the other it was the torso.

The eyes, when she opened them and viewed them under the careful beam of a pocket flashlight, were bloodshot, tinged with the same root-like growths present over the skin. In certain specimens a kind of black fluid leaked from both the tear ducts and the nostrils, and when she prodded this with her tools it seemed to almost feel like the slick texture of oil.

The teeth had a jagged, rotten appearance to them, and it appeared that they were merely undergoing heavy deterioration for she could find no evidence of the teeth actually mutating into new forms as might have been expected with those afflicted by viral mutation. But she knew appearances could be deceiving, and for all they knew the human teeth were rotting away because the mutagen was creating something else in its place.

What she found interesting was the stuff that came out of them, for there was something off about the blood that they bled. When she carefully made an incision with a scalpel it oozed out with the consistency of mud, and the color was not the deep red she would have expected. There was a strange tone to it that resembled that of muddy orange, mixed with that of red oxygenated blood.

When she cut open the torso of one of the infected there was no red at all, only the muddy sludge-like blood or fluid or whatever it was that she made sure to take several samples of, placed inside plastic baggies for later study. Within she found that the internal organs appeared intact of mutation. They were identical to that of an ordinary human's at a glance, but there was still much that she knew was different once they were able to suitably examine it. What was more disturbing was the state of their bones.

There was a strange kind of growth crusting over the bones of the infected, similar in appearance to the white veins covering their skin but far more developed, jagged and rough to the touch. These growths were a muddy orange, a similar color to the mutated blood, that made her wonder if this was what the white veins would be developing into. It also presented another possibility, which was that the growths were in some way parasitic and were now enveloping and drawing nutrients from the hosts. It would certainly explain the fact that the femur she examined, once she carefully cut away the growths, was brittle to the touch and even cracking in some places.

She wanted more. If she had the resources and the authority she would want these bodies bagged and placed into cold storage for long-term research, want them sent straight to the laboratories where she would have the staff and equipment needed for a further analysis of the cadavers because this was something unfamiliar, a new vector of mutation in the field of bioengineering. At the very least, they were dealing with a new virus here, but she was growing convinced with each second that it was not a virus, but rather some kind of parasitic organism.

Correlation was needed, but unfortunately, Emmerich – the virologist they brought aboard – was one of the casualties of the attack. He was the man whose guts had been torn out by the monsters.

So was Creelman, and another soldier named Brian. The zoologist Stone, too. Four casualties, but already it was a sizeable chunk of their unit that was deceased, made worse especially considering Creelman was not even killed by the monsters, but by his own teammates' accidental gunfire. In hindsight friendly fire really was a risk, given both the confusion of what was happening and among the men and the fact that some of the attacking infected were garbed in the uniforms of, presumably, Alpha Team.

Morale around the camp was low as the news sank in but she felt that it was the last thing she was bothered about. She needed to know more about this new pathogen.

Which was why it was so disappointing when her requests were flatly denied by Captain Clarke.

"But why?" she almost yelled, her face livid.

"We'll tag them and bury them and do that later, Yun. They may have been rabid dogs but these were still men who were once under my command!" Captain Clarke outright yelled back, each word straining under his voice as he showed her what he held in his hand.

He was holding a small pile of shiny things in his hands – dog tags. Far more than three, which could only mean they were collected from the bodies of the creatures.

"Is it them?"

There was a grim look on his face as he nodded.

So that explained what happened to at least 8 members of Alpha Team. Infected and turned into bloodthirsty monsters.

"So that's it," pointed out Mike. "We already know what happened to Alpha team. They were infected by something, and they went crazy and mutated into zombies. That's it, case closed!"

"No, it is nowhere near closed, we still don't know anything about what happened," Rachel retorted. "And these aren't zombies, anyway."

"Who the hell cares if they're zombies! We have to get off this island and call in a firebombing run!" he was frantically pacing about.

Panic. Never a good sign in a situation as delicate as this.

"We can't do that, Cox!" snapped Clarke. Huh, she had never learned Mike's surname. Clarke continued, "Our objective remains the same. We continue investigating the true circumstances of what exactly happened to Alpha team, and to do that we're going to have to trace where these men came from."

"Well agreed on that," one of the soldiers, the one with a stubbled goatee said.

"Well there's nothing on that. We've searched their pockets and found nothing about where they were going, where they came from," Mike retorted.

Rachel remained quiet, looking off into the side.

There was still one more body that needed further investigating. And she wasn't going to get permission from Captain Clarke this time.

A shovel sitting against the wall of the cabin caught her attention and she stared at it for a few seconds before getting up.

She grabbed the shovel and took it with her, dragging it along the earth.

"Yun? What are you doing?" somebody nearby asked. She ignored them as she headed towards her objective.

The mound of recently dug earth with the crude headstone.

She should have done this far earlier.

Staring down at the earth for just a second she stabbed the shovel into the mound, and began to dig.

"What are you doing? What are you doing, you Chinese bitch?" Mike snarled as he moved to pull her away what she had to go. Growling she struggled and tried to shove him off, but he was very, very strong. The pressure only became lighter when she realized he was yelling and kicking and somebody else was pulling him off of her.

"Don't you think he's been through enough? Let him rest in peace!"

"Jesus Mike, calm down! Calm down!" Sam's voice.

Now freed of the force pulling her back she immediately continued digging away, even as Mike thrashed and yelled. If she had been paying attention she would have found it a comical sight, how the taller, stronger woman was clearly able to hold back the smaller man. She dug as fast as she could, a growing mound of dirt to the side.

Black fluid suddenly began pooling out of the earth and she largely ignored it, only continuing to dig and when the shovel hit something solid she bent down and began clearing the unstable earth away from what was increasingly obvious was a coffin. Soon enough it was clear that the fluid was surrounding the coffin and leaking out of it, it even seemed to be pooling out the bottom of the thin-walled wooden box.

Without thinking about it she lifted the lid up over the coffin and-

"Oh my god, that smell!" Sam covered her mouth, letting go of Mike to force herself to look away. Rachel herself was fighting off the nausea – the stench was horrific, decomposing flesh mixed with something else that reminded her of earthworms and maggots. She let the coffin lid drop back down as she coughed, waving her hand in front of her face.

The commotion was attracting attention around the site, more people running over to see what was happening – and gagging over the toxic smell that hung in the air. The only person who did not was Captain Clarke, who maintained a stony look on his face as he slowly approached the grave.

Rachel gave herself a moment of composition, before pulling the lid up again. This time, she was ready for the burst of the stench, and gritted her teeth before lifting it up all the way.

Clarke said nothing. Allowed her to do so.

The smell from before was really just a preview to the overpowering stench that emanated from the coffin. Out the corner of her eye she thought she could see Karen running off into the bushes to messily empty the contents of her gut.

Still, very little, not even the smell, prepared them for the sight that awaited them within the coffin.

He was horrifically mutated, even beyond death. The body was clearly torn in half, and growing around it – out of it – above and under and all over it – was walls of what looked like fleshy plated fungus with the mud-orange color of vomit. It looked almost as if the man was literally being assimilated, fusing, whatever with the fungus, or that the fungus was growing out of him and was long overtaking its host, she could see how his left arm seemed intact but his right had literally vanished, dissolved and broken down and becoming one with the biohazardous matter he was infected with.

On forcing herself on a closer inspection it was apparent that the corpse was not even originally bisected, the way what was left of the spine curved like a snake, entangled with ropes of the lichen-like biomatter, made it clear that the movement of the growing parasitic biomass had actually ripped the corpse in two within the coffin, fungus blooming out of his midsection and organs where its growths had torn him.

The body parts that were unaffected by the mutation and growth seemed intact enough to still be recognizably of human origin, enough to tell her that this corpse was a male. The skin and muscle still seemed intact at a glance, she could even still see his dog tags, but the skull was completely bare bone stained with orange and a sickly green. His lower jaw hanging from the rest of the skull far wider than humanly possible, connected only by thin strands of remaining tissue and skin. The sight of it made him look like he had died screaming and for a moment the morbid thought of him somehow still being alive when he was buried crossed her mind.

The fungal matter seemed to be moving, orange strands making up its mass twitching and twisting under the exposed light like worms. His chest bulged like there was something slithering under it, and without warning a laceration opened up from the pressure welling up, and with a small bursting sound a mix of vomit-colored sludge and the black fluid of rot began to gush out of it.

The resulting smell that spewed forth only added to the urge to vomit, though she powered through it.

"Woah," she muttered through both disgust and morbid fascination as she made sure to take in every disgusting detail she could. "The degree of mutation is unprecedented."

"Explain," Captain Clarke ordered, remaining completely calm as she reached into her pockets to take out another plastic baggie, forceps and a cotton swab.

"Look at the internal cavity," she pointed at where his chest and stomach would be – should be – "Do you see any intact internal organs?"

He shook his head.

"Compare that with his muscle tissue, and the way this stuff is growing. The mutations started from the inside, before bursting their way out. Look at some of the body structure, too. Indistinguishable from the invading growth…"

"Seen anything like this, Sam?" one of the soldiers asked. Oh yeah. She was with the BSAA.

"Well, not exactly," she choked through the smell. Scrunched her nose. "Can you please hurry it up?"

The forceps picked away a scrap of flesh, and she sealed it into the baggie. As repulsive as the corpse was she had to admit, she was intrigued, if not fascinated. It only encouraged her further, telling herself that she had made the right choice to come with this mission so she could study the genetically and biologically anomalous phenomenon before her eyes. It wasn't often that she would get the chance to see something so bizarre before anyone else in the biogenetics field did.

"Oh my god," Arcady was saying, her eyes wide with horror as she forced her hands over her mouth. Rachel didn't blame her.

With a single, trembling finger, Arcady pointed at the mutated man's arm, almost hidden by discoloration and rot.

Carved into the man's arm like a butcher with meat in what was clearly a postmortem action, was a set of dots and numbers.

Coordinates.


	6. The Brush

**The Brush**

They later placed those numbers of the mapping system, and had discovered that the coordinates pointed to a location on the coast of the other side of the island. A tiny fishing and trapping village, the one major settlement on the island that received people back when there was still a reason to be here like the ski lodge or the mining work – but as far as they knew the village was now large abandoned, with only a few anonymous people left who had been unaccounted by the system. Without much further words, Captain Clarke declared that this would be their next location to continue their investigation. There were several disheartening sights from the soldiers, but they didn't complain.

Most were quiet for the duration of their trek. Even Sam, whom she assumed had seen her fair share of horrific mutations during her time in the BSAA was clearly unsettled by the nature of the mangled and desecrated corpse.

When she looked up and down nobody was really speaking to each other. The only exception was Sam, who kept a smile on and was apparently trying to make conversation with Brock, but even then it was clear it was a losing effort and her attempts at a smile were faltering. For what it was worth though, she was managing to keep a smile on Brock.

She noticed that she soldier walking up behind her was Mike, and he had a look of blank void on his face.

"Hey. Mike?"

He said nothing. Staring off into the space in front of him.

"What do you want?"

"…look, I'm sorry. Okay?"

"What do you have to be sorry for? You found out what you wanted. The one guy we know Alpha team managed to give a proper burial? We got to find out where to go next, so that's on you. I'm sure you'll be able to write a great looking report afterwards. Then get it published in the latest science journal."

She looked at him for a few moments before giving up and looking away. He clearly was not in the mood to talk and if that was that then that was that.

"His name was Jacob Larson."

She wasn't looking at him but she knew the unprovoked statement was directed at her.

"I've lost friends before. Very, very close friends, that I'd known since training camp. Not sure if you have. Not all of them were as lucky as Jacob. We don't all get to go home."

Yeah, definitely directed at her, no doubt about it. She decided not to answer.

"Have you ever lost anybody?"

The same question Lansing had asked her last night. The same question she chose to redirect elsewhere.

"Just like I thought."

His voice was dismissive. Her silence sending the wrong message.

"Yes."

"Yes what?"

"I've lost people before."

She didn't want to talk any further about it, but she really did mean what she said.

Mike said nothing else.

###

The most uncomfortable thing Rachel found thus far was the lack of much life on the island. This she already was able to guess from what she could recall of the first day, from listening around for life at night, but it was especially palpable now that they were trekking alongside thick marshland. Reeds coated their terrain and they made sure not to step into the water itself but the lack of insects chirps and frog croaks in a place that should have been teeming with life was bizarre.

They saw a small building up ahead by a small dock next to the swamp, and Captain Clarke held his hand up before the group.

Rachel glanced around the group. Most didn't show much of a reaction to the riverside cabin.

"Spread out. Could find something interesting," Captain Clarke said.

There wasn't much Rachel found remarkable about the riverside cabin itself. As the group spread itself out, members investigating different aspects of the immediate area, she found herself drawn to the reeds. Bent down to observe the marshes further. The mud where the river bank lined was a thick black stuff, its appearance reminding her of peat bogs one could find in the Scottish moors. Small gas pockets seemed to appear and expand in the bog, and she could see glimpses of small bones stuck in the substance, like rodents or frogs.

Thing was, she wasn't sure what she was looking at, exactly. Brackish swamp? Or was it some kind of pollutant, not natural to this region of the world?

After there, there was a kind of odor in the air she couldn't recognize. It wasn't crude oil, but something about it smelled almost artificial.

She turned around to see Sam staring upwards at something that was giving her a wide-eyed look of curiosity.

A single large and plump-looking fruit hung from the branches of a creeping plant overhead. It looked colorful and juicy, and Sam must have thought so too because she leaned up to grab the fruit and pluck it off its vine. She turned the fruit over in her hands, observing it with a kind of admiration.

"Now that's a cute fruit," she declared. "Not like any fruit I'd seen, though."

"Mind letting me see?" Rachel asked, hand reached out to grab the fruit. Sam obliged, and Rachel turned the fruit over with a critical eye.

"What do you make of it?" Sam asked.

It looked nothing like any other fruit she'd ever seen. In fact, it almost resembled a multitude of different fruits clumped together into one. It was the size of a melon, but with an irregular shape where one spherical side was the color of pink, and on another side a lump that almost looked like a bell pepper's stuck out and it was colored a shade of candy-blue she had never seen on any fruit. It was the same on every different angle, the fruit was several shades of pink and green and yellow and red all at once. The football-sized item looked like a child's idea of a mishmash of all the fruits they liked only with even stranger options than what was available.

"Not sure," she admitted. "Almost looks like some kind of hybrid. Possibly engineered."

She peered up at the creeping vines. Nothing especially out of the ordinary, simply leaves and lavender-white flowers, with no other fruits hanging around for her to compare the specimen in her hands to.

She shrugged. "If it's a genetic hybrid, it's got way more than the usual two fruits crossed together into one. We're talking at least five plant fruits here and then some. Look at the colors." She tossed the fruit back to Sam who readily caught it.

Again Rachel looked up at the creeping plant and crossed her arms. "It must have been engineered that way by someone, no other way about it. This plant was bred this way."

"And?" Sam asked expectantly.

Not sure what to say next, she continued, "Someone's making giant leaps forward in my own field of agro-genetic engineering."

There was silence for a moment and when Rachel turned her head she saw that Sam was tilting her head slightly with a look of mischief.

"I'm waiting for you to tell me if it's edible, Rachel."

"What –"Rachel sputtered, alarmed. "No! I'd imagine not."

"But look at it!" Sam retorted, pointing at the colorful multi-hybrid fruit for added exaggeration. "It's brightly colored and it looks delicious."

"Sam, we know absolutely nothing about what this plant is. It could have been cultivated through an infectious virus, and besides, colorful plants should never be eaten unless you have a death wish. That's usually a good sign the plant is poisonous –"

She stopped when Sam broke into a laugh, patted her on the shoulder. "I'm just messing with you," she admitted, before tossing the fruit away into the bog. "We good?"

Rachel stared at her before glancing at the fruit that was now slowly floating away with a look of low-key frustration. That was one test sample she wasn't going to get back, especially as it floated off to the end of the dock, soon to drift away forever.

But still, she sighed and put on her approximation of an amused smile. "Yeah, yeah, we are."

She glanced back and saw Mike stepping out of the swamp-side cabin on the dock.

"What'd you find in there?" Arcady yelled out to Mike.

"Nothing much. Just a bunch of fishing supplies, and nobody's touched them in years. I don't think –"

He wasn't able to finish his sentence, not when there was a sudden explosion in the water next to him, and then the dock was collapsing with Mike still standing on it.

"Holy shit!" Sam yelled, others in the team scrambling to find out what was going on.

The end of the dock was being pulled off into the swamp with unnatural speed, Mike still trapped aboard it on all fours. He glanced around, drenched and panicked as he was hauled further and further away by the aquatic creature pulling the dock, before he slipped into the water.

As he desperately swam back to shore, however, the piece of dock that had been swimming away at top speed became still. And unexpectedly, the wood turned around before it began to move back to shore, the pattern of the movement impossible to mistake for merely being the current. It was an animal, moving very, very fast.

Straight towards Mike.

"Don't look behind you!" someone yelled out. "Swim, Mike! Swim for it! Don't look back whatever you do!"

Rachel raised her assault rifle. She aimed down the sights at the watery mass that was fast catching up to Mike. She held her breath…

"Hold you goddamn fire, Mike's in the way!" Sam yelled next to her, swinging her hand down to throw off her rifle aim.

"I've got a clear line of sight," Rachel hissed in irritation. Whatever was pursuing Mike was something large, and something obviously very fast, and it was breaching the water. She saw twin lines of a massive, dark thing breach the surface, obscured by waves and its body structure moving from side to side as it swam closer to Mike.

"We can't chance it!"

She had split seconds to decide whether to start firing at the thing, at the possibility of hitting Mike.

She held her fire.

Mike was yelling in terror as he made it to shore, crawling his way up the bogs as other comrades reached out to haul him up.

And then with a screeching roar, the monster exploded out of the waters mere feet behind him.

It dragged itself onto land, growling and snapping its jaws to try to grab Mike even as they scrabbled backwards from it as fast as they could. It was massive, crocodilian-like and yet with slick black skin and a body shape that looked wrong in every way for an alligator. The front arms it was using to haul itself were huge and muscled, and yet as more of its body came onto land she saw that it didn't seem to have back legs at all. No, it did, but they were atrophied away into little more than useless stubs that forced it into a half-slither.

The monster opened its jaws wide, dozens if not hundreds of jagged teeth showing themselves. Its head glistened with what looked like a hundred yellow eyes that reflected off the sunlight.

And now that Mike was hauled to safety and they had a huge clear target, they opened fire.

Assault rifle fire rained down on what she could now see was some kind of enormously mutated salamander, and as its body shook from the impact of dozens of bullets it appeared to cut off its attack. With a bellowing growl the aquatic monster swept around, its massive tail almost striking Captain Clarke, before it dragged itself back into the waters, escaping the round that continued to shoot after it.

The mutated monster fled, the only signs it was ever there being the destroyed dock and the massive wave-like swishing patterns its almost serpentine body had made in the mud as it escaped back into the swamp. The entire group stared at the water, breathless at what just happened.

"Can we leave now?" Mike breathed.

###

The sudden attack of the aquatic B.O.W. did little to hamper the group's progress to their destination, given the sheer speed of what just happened and how, just as quickly as it appeared, it had retreated back into the murky depths from which it came.

Apart from shock Mike was physically unharmed, which was good. Injury would have slowed things down worse than if he had been killed.

It was something of a shame, she supposed. Not Mike surviving the encounter, but rather the creature escaping after it realized its prey stood a good chance of hurting and killing it. If their bullets had managed to slay the beast it would have been yet another valuable specimen on which to perform an examination.

The eight men who attacked them in the dead of night, apparently insane.

The corpse in the coffin, or rather what had become of the corpse.

The large, attractive colorful fruit Sam had plucked.

And now this, an overgrown and abnormally shaped salamander that behaved far more like an extremely aggressive crocodilian than it did an amphibian near the bottom of the food chain.

In one case eight men seemed to be suffering from the exact same mutations and yet it wasn't quite the same with the corpse in the coffin and the salamander, let alone the fruit. She had never heard of any mutagen causing plant life to develop abnormal fruits that seemed to be hybrids of multiple different plant species. If anything an aggressive, animate and carnivorous plant would fit in the general pattern more. She'd heard of things like that, researchers looking into how mutated and carnivorous plant life could be developed as B.O.W.s.

But never as fruits, unless somehow the same guys making bio-weapons also had a side venture in fancy agricultural produce.

Then the coffin corpse – possibly the late-stage result of infection as indicated by the eight men. But did that explain the salamander?

Yes and no, depending on the point of view.

The t-Virus was recorded to enlarge certain animal test subjects to enormous sizes, and yet infected humans were comparatively similar to their pre-infected human forms, for a time at least. So if anything, this was a sign that they were dealing with a strain of Progenitor Virus. It was simple, logical, fit in with the data garnered in too many previous outbreaks. And as unfortunate as it may be, it would be considered a typical result in such a viral outbreak. Not 100-percent foolproof considering it was a mutagenic virus, but predictable by a large margin.

The kind of thing that others had already studied extensively. Old knowledge that was merely repurposed.

If that were truly the case, she honestly would feel too disappointed.

But then what about the other anomalies they'd experienced?

Memory loss, apparent merging of memories between the same individuals?

Of course, assuming those were related in the first place would be assuming something else had transpired, but it wasn't a pleasant possibility and she didn't want to rule it in just yet.

The mutations didn't seem to line up with each other, there wasn't a pattern that she could see yet. So as lifeless as the island seemed to be at a glance they needed to encounter more mutant specimens, preferably those that she could perform a closer examination on.

Then maybe she'd be able to detect something of a pattern to the way the infection worked.

After everything that had happened in the past day or so there was a palpable sense of exhaustion to the unit even though it was barely mid-morning, 11am or so by her own estimate. Clarke himself seemed to be aware of this. "Hold up," said Captain Clarke. He looked over the whole team behind him carefully, seemingly assessing everybody individually before making a decision. "At ease, men." Raised his hands, both of them, and raised all his fingers. "10 minutes."

The group stopped moving, most of them sitting down and trying to get themselves some rest and relaxation in this eerie place.

Rachel walked past Sam, tapped her on the shoulder. "Hey, gonna be using the lavatory. Keep an eye out, alright?"

Sam smiled, flashed her a thumbs-up. She could tell, however, that despite her trembling failures to put up a cheery mood in the past two hours or so her smile and thumbs-up this time was genuine.

She found it oddly amusing how, despite everything that had happened thus far Sam was still able to try to put up a smile and a can-do attitude.

It made her wonder how much of it was actually real and how much of it was her putting on a face for the sake of the team. She wouldn't consider herself to be someone who knew Sam well, but she did know that few soldiers who spent time in the BSAA came out with an attitude that was as chipper and optimistic as when they went in.

But still, she did appreciate the happy smiles she gave and the fact that she was still able to talk about romantic relationships even while on a mission that was attacking Rachel's sense of alarm on almost every way possible. Real or fake, she personally found it sincerely funny and in a roundabout way the smiles lifted her spirits through that sense of humor it provoked in her.

She walked down a small hill and past tall grasses and ferns that reached up to her knee until she was out of the sight of the rest of the unit. When she was sure she had reasonable amount of privacy to herself she bent down and began to dig with her hands. Once she felt that the bowl-shaped pit in the earth was satisfactory enough she squatted, started to pull down her pants.

A small noise some ten feet behind her, little rustling in the ferns as something pushed aside wild brush.

She sighed and rolled her eyes, feeling more irritation than embarrassment at the unflattering position she was caught in. "It'd be nice if a girl can take a shit in peace, you know."

Her mind had gone back to continuing her personal business, she wasn't concerned that it was possibly one of the infected zombie-like creatures because from their previous encounter she had seen that those things were incredibly noisy when they saw prey, and in her careless lack of concern she almost missed the sound. It was easy to miss it, a quiet, huffing, panting kind of noise, dog-like, and it sounded like it came from an animal. And this was a very big animal that was only a few feet away, and it was clearly not a dog.

Hearing it made the hairs on her arms raise in alarm and she suddenly felt her heart drop for just a moment.

Craning her head over her shoulders, she saw an almost comically wobbly dark mass in the brushes behind her.

Then the mass crept closer, ghostly silent aside from the low panting, and the grasses parted aside to reveal what it was.

Her face instantly gave way to the wide-eyed fear of a deer caught in headlights when she realized that creeping up behind her was an absolutely massive grizzly bear.

It took another calm step before suddenly starting to bound towards her at full speed.

For a split second she broke out of her frozen stupor and spun back to pick up her rifle, only to yell as an enormous mass slammed its way into her back, sending her flying through the air. She landed face-first in dirt and grass, heard the guttural animalistic groan. It was a deep, throttling sound that didn't sound anywhere near a fearsome and aggressive roar. Somehow that was worse, because it told her that they bear didn't see her as a threat, or an intruder to keep out of territory, but that it saw her as simply food to kill and eat and that notion was sending her into a panic.

Heavy footsteps were plodding closer and closer. Her rifle, miraculously enough, was still clutched in her hand, and fight or flight instinct kicked in as she rolled over to face the bear, lying on her back.

There was barely enough time for her to properly aim the rifle before the animal charged again, coming right above her and biting down onto her. Her quick thinking was the only thing that stopped it from tearing into her face, she raised her arms in self-defense and it chomped down onto her arms instead. She could feel its teeth actually sinking into her wrists and the feeling of it reached her brain for only a moment before she opened her mouth and let out a scream.

The bear thrashed, growling as it shook at her, and then its mouth let go of her hands for just a moment before it dug into her chest instead, then another bite at her stomach and then another, each new and merely glancing bite inflicting blinding pain that brought tears to her eyes, she kicked and screamed and struggled with everything she had as the bear effortlessly pulled her and tossed her around like a dog playing with a ragdoll.

She somehow managed to punch it in the eye, her rifle long lost and forgotten in the struggle, and now pain erupted through her leg as the bear chomped down there and dragged her about, thrashing and shaking its head all the while.

At some point in the thrashing she somehow managed to pull out her survival knife and started mindlessly jabbing it wherever she could, the soft fleshy sounds of the knife stabbing through layers of fur and fat and tissue that did nothing to slow it down, but still she screamed in both terror and rage as she continued trying to fight back. It didn't matter where she was stabbing it, the face or the neck or whatever, just so long as the blade was connecting-

It didn't seem to do a damn thing as the bear mauled into her. Ripped up a big chunk of her uniform, miraculously missing the flesh, and the force of it flipped her on the other side onto her belly.

And suddenly it stopped. She fell limp like a lifeless toy, painfully aware her back was turned to the bear with no easy way to defend herself, her breaths short and shallow as she tried as hard as she could to will herself to stop moving, to appear dead.

The bear seemed curious in this new development, why its prey had seemingly given up on the struggle and stopped moving completely. It poked and prodded her with its nose, sniffing all over her, her neck and her head and her back, and again it made that guttural animalistic moan that didn't sound particularly aggressive.

One of its legs suddenly decided to step on her back. She could feel the immense weight of the animal pressing down on her, the heat of its hot stinking breath upon the back of her neck, hot saliva dribbling down onto her neck and hair, and against what her brain was telling her she opened her mouth to let out a low moan of pain.

She was panting too hard, heart pounding too fast, no she couldn't have another panic attack, not now! Not when she needed to think rationally about how she was going to get out of this situation! But complete irrational terror was gripping her mind, bare comprehension of the possibility that she was going to die, dragged off into the woods and devoured by a grizzly. Of all the fantastical ways she imagined she could die on this island this was not one of them.

When was the last time someone who thought they might die at the hands of zombies or mutants ended up mauled to death by a mundane ordinary animal?

It didn't seem any different from a normal bear.

Abruptly the bear rolled her over. Her eyes were completely wide and staring as the animal slowly came into her sight. It was looking directly into her. Breathing right onto her face. She could see the gaping wounds to the side of the face where she had stabbed it countless times with her knife, and somewhere it seemed unfazed, blood freely flowing down the wounds and splatting onto the earth.

The bear bent low. Sniffed her. There was a mild awareness her blood was running somewhere from a fresh wound on her face and the bear sniffed that too.

It licked the wound. Licked the blood.

When it leaned back the bear looked like it was smiling. She knew it wasn't smiling because it was just the way its face was put together, not at all a real smile.

Yet what was left of her conscious brain now entertained the morbid thought that the bear looked genuinely malevolent, that it could have just ripped out her throat when it caught her with her pants down but chose to kill her slowly, drag her about and toy with her bite-by-bite because it was a sadistic fucking animal.

And it opened its mouth, exposing rows upon rows of canine fangs and teeth within.

She could see her bloodstains, bits of cloth and torn skin when the bear had bitten her.

And deeper within the mouth, she blankly realized, there was a _second pair of jaws_ _inside the_ _throat_, the teeth blunt and humanlike.

"Rachel! Oh my god, Rachel!"

Sam's voice.

The sounds of a shotgun firing, each blast punctuated by a _ka-chak!, _she could see pellets striking the bear in the wounded side of its face.

"Get off of her, you son of a bitch!"

It gruffly shook its head, apparently shrugging off shotgun blasts to the face like they were nothing, before it got off of her to face the new enemy. It rose up to its full height on two legs and let out a ferocious roar that chilled her to the bone.

Somewhere she could hear Sam swearing and small mechanical sounds, fresh shells being loaded into the shotgun as fast as she could.

When the bear landed back on four legs its immense weight shook the earth before it charged Sam.

She didn't see what happened nor was Sam's safety at the front of her mind, she wasn't ashamed to admit that. She had an opening to escape and she leapt on it immediately, she was scrambling away on all fours, all she could think of was getting away as far as she could from the creature, even as she heard Sam's own screams as it came her turn to be tossed around and mauled by the bear.

Her vision suddenly became drawn to a long solid black thing that was in front of her, and in her daze she focused on what it was.

Sam's shotgun. She must have dropped it when the bear charged her.

The other part of her mind now asserted itself. She had to save Sam!

Behind her she realized Sam's screaming had ceased, but she could still hear the bear's huffing and snorting.

Crawling pathetically to it she managed to grab it and turn the weapon so she could have it pointed at a target. Gritting her teeth she braced the stock against her shoulder with one hand, aware that in her current state the recoil could very well break her bones. Her other hand weakly gripped itself onto the pump, and in the back of her head she realized she was a dead woman if the shotgun was empty.

But there was no way to check it, not now. All she could do was pray there were still unfired shells in the weapon.

The bear was slowly walking towards her, even if it wasn't looking at her. Blood was dripping from its jaws. She didn't see Sam anywhere.

It seemed mildly confused for a moment, like it didn't know what to make of Rachel.

Her grip was too weak to aim down the sights, and praying and hoping for the best she pointed the shotgun in the bear's general direction and fired.

The spray of buckshot that hit it directly in the face seemed to do nothing and it roared.

Her left hand weakly pulled at the pump. Empty.

"Get away from it, Rachel! Get out of here!" Sam screamed. Still alive somewhere.

And immediately the bear's attention turned to her.

"Yeah! Come here, come and get me!"

And the bear charged in the other direction.

She saw Sam standing there, a face that was gritting its teeth in anger at the animal rapidly filling with wide-eyed terror.

This time she could see it, see with her own eyes as the bear sunk its teeth down on Sam's leg. Then it pressed down and there was the sickening sound of a mighty crunch of bone that filled the air. And then Sam screamed, and she continued screaming and thrashing as the bear dragged her deeper into the brush.

"No! No! No! Rachel! Help me!" she screamed and screamed in complete terror for her own life, the screams of pain mixing in with terrified, desperate sobs before she and the bear vanished into the tall grasses and ferns, the only indication of them being the brush that continued to shake violently.

And Rachel screamed, too.

She clutched her hands to the sides of her skull, something like an invisible fire burning inside of her.

Foreign thoughts were invading her mind and all it was all-

"_Rachel! Help me!_"

Terror.

Agony.

Realizing she was going to die.

She did not want to die.

And Rachel sat there, tears streaming down her eyes, the sounds of Sam's desperate screams for help running through her mind.

The entire encounter felt like hours but in reality about less than a minute had passed by.

She just sat there, staring at the brush where they had gone, the sounds of the bear and the screams fading away. She wasn't even aware when the other soldiers and members of the team had rushed onto the scene, even when Mike bent down right before her.

"Where's Sam?" Mike was yelling into her face. "Where's Sam!"

"Sam… Sam… Sam… Oh god, Sam…"

She didn't look at him, only stared at the brush where Sam was dragged off, the trail of blood, and then she started sobbing, tears flowing freely as the terror and the guilt crushed her thoughts.


	7. First Run

**First Run**

A scrap of cloth. That was it. A single, bloodied scrap of cloth was all they could find.

That, and a pool of blood. No remains.

Never before had she thought Mike's words from earlier would haunt her so dramatically.

She was bleeding profusely from multiple injuries across her body and needed stitches and emergency treatment immediately but in the middle of Conrad sewing up her second open bite wound she had demanded to go check the blood trail herself. She needed to see with her own eyes that there truly was nothing left behind of Sam that they could recover, not a shoe, not a severed hand, not a nothing.

She didn't know if it was adrenaline that was preventing her from feeling pain or if the feeling of having her mind, her own sense of self assaulted by that of a woman dying in pain and fear for a reason that she couldn't explain, but she barely reacted at all to anything Conrad said. There was nothing the burning sensation of alcohol on her wounds could do to break her out of the blank staring shell-shock she was in. It was like a dream, or some horrible nightmare, yet none of it was.

She could still hear the screams repeating in her head. The raw terror.

_Rachel! Help me!_

Was that what it was like in her final moments? Her distraction of the bear to save Rachel must have been a decision she made in the heat of the moment – and when the consequence of that action came upon her in the next second her courage, her dignity, her desire to save someone she barely knew must have vanished instantly.

Replaced by blind terror. The realization that she didn't want to die.

Regret at the last decision she would ever make even if it saved Rachel's life.

She would probably have made that sacrifice with an affirmative smile if she was asked about it, but the truth was that nobody would ever want to die. And when faced with an imminent death she brought on herself she died kicking and screaming and begging for salvation.

It wasn't fair.

It wasn't fair at all because as she much as she loathed herself for it Rachel knew she did not have the courage to believe she should have died in Sam's place.

Sam shouldn't have died for Rachel's stupidity. But Rachel didn't want to die too and she wanted to just beat herself up over the fact that despite everything she was _glad _to be alive, glad that Sam chose to distract the bear so it would not go after her instead. She did not want to admit that but it was the truth.

Goddamn coward.

A selfish coward, that was what they'd call her. What she'd always been called all her life. Someone who only cared about herself.

###

She didn't tell anyone what she went through, because what could they do with it? They would just think she was crazy, that the trauma had gotten to her and honestly she wouldn't blame them. It was a conclusion she herself would arrive at if not for the fact that experienced it first-hand.

The unit had made a thorough sweep across the area to make absolutely sure that the place was clear and to search for any remaining vestiges of Sam, to no effect. Her injuries warranted that, whether they liked it or not, they were going to have to camp down for the night in this place. She didn't like that decision and she didn't want it – the thought of camping near the site where Sam had been killed made her want to weep and tear at her own face – but it was Captain Clarke's decision and that was that.

Still she kept it in. Refused to show any sign of emotion after she was treated, put into the same medical tent next to Andre.

She didn't want to show any weakness to these men. Give them any sign that she was more than the image of the distant consultant researcher she cultivated.

So for hours she lied there on her spot, wrapped in bandages and staring ahead of her. Andre wasn't in a mood to make conversation, his leg had only gotten worse and he was more visibly straining to even speak little words to Conrad, so she just ignored him. She barely even noticed when somebody else had come into the tent. Her attention was only gained when the person sat down, next to her.

She wasn't expecting it to be Mike. He just sat there, staring down at the floor.

Looking completely dead-eyed.

She looked down at his hands, where she noticed his left fist was clenched tight, and without saying a word his curled up fist opened and she saw what he was clutching inside.

A torn patch of olive green uniform, sullied by specks of blood. Sewed on it was the logo of the United States Marines.

There was something else she noticed, and when she flipped it over she saw it. Sewed by hand this time on the other side was another banner. The logo of the BSAA.

She was a proud soldier to the end.

Sam didn't deserve to die a pointless death that Rachel had caused with her own stupidity and carelessness.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

She broke down, right there and then, and started crying.

"Did you know her?" she asked.

He didn't answer at first. Then in a stilted voice, "We were in the same unit for the past eight months, 2nd Battalion. Captain Clarke, Sam and I. She smiled even during the worst times. Always tried to keep our spirits up. She liked reminding us of home. Saved my ass once by kicking away a grenade and she laughed it off when I bought her a drink."

Clutching the cloth to her heart her other hand clutched onto his hand. And after a moment he held his hand close over her too.

"She saved your ass," he murmured.

There was a quality to his deeply haunted look that she couldn't quite put her finger on. But it was replied only a moment later when he turned to face her with a grave, utterly serious expression.

"I don't think she should have."

She opened her mouth as if to say something but no words could come out, because she had no idea what to say. She was used to being completely blunt with people about her feelings regardless of how much it might actually hurt those people, but it was a relatively new experience to be faced with brutal, blunt honesty from someone else even if she would much rather have that than to be told a sugarcoated lie.

He gave a slight shake of the head, clearly expecting the answer.

"Were you close?"

"Were we close?" he repeated like he couldn't believe the question. He turned to look at her again, and there was a distant look in his eyes. "We were close. We were pretty damn close."

It was a look she recognized, even if it was unspoken.

"Did she… know? You ever got to tell her?"

He stared at her for a few seconds before turning away and shutting his eyes. He shook his head, as tears quietly streamed down his cheeks.

###

She couldn't bring herself to sleep later that night.

Not a moment went by where she wasn't thinking of what she could have done. What she should have done.

Sam's last words, her last thoughts as she was dragged to her death. How her dying thoughts had now inextricably become a part of her.

It made her wonder if she was losing her mind.

Nothing remarkable happened during the night. When exhaustion finally did force her into rest though it wasn't Sam's screams that haunted her dreams.

###

"_You have any family?"_

"_A brother. But we're not really close." _

_A gaggle of kids ran past them, giggling and chasing each other. Neither of them reacted, having long become accustomed to the kids. Her partner on that day was a man named Eric McCallister, and he liked giving candy to the kids, always made sure to have a chocolate bar or chewing gum whenever they were out on patrol so he could give it to kids they met on the street. _

_Eric was a good guy. He told her that he had a little sister waiting for him back home, a cheerleader, and little things like giving candy and toys to the local kids here reminded him of what he had for him back home. All she'd do was numbly nod, but she respected that kind of thinking. Respected him as a friend, for what it was worth. _

_Then they got a call. Command needed some MPs back at base, there was a case that they wanted investigating. A few bodies had been found, cut open and left to bleed out in alleyways with their heart, stomach, kidneys and liver hastily removed. Amateur work, apparently, having left a bloody mess that was far from a surgeon's precision. _

_Once upon a time it would have indicated the presence of the black market for donor organ trading. With how the market and demands of today had changed there was no telling. _

_For all they knew, they could be signs of a B.O.W. development operation that required fresh human resources. Grisly, but not surprising._

_It wouldn't be the first time she'd heard of such a thing._

_They were heading back to the command post when one particular kid started running at them, not with a big enthusiastic smile but what looked like a look of terror instead. Eric jogged slightly ahead with a comforting hand out, asking the kid what was wrong, and then Rachel realized that the kid was clutching a grenade in his hands. _

_Her aim was quick and she pulled the trigger but by then it was too late. _

###

When the sun rose somewhere in the distance she heard the barking of a dog. Or at least, it sounded like a dog, because something felt just slightly off about the sound. It went on for a few minutes before disappearing, and there were no more barks afterwards.

On a more unsettling note that sent a panic throughout the camp for an hour however, Andre had disappeared. There was nothing but a pool of blood where he was and despite their best efforts to search for him the crippled soldier had all but vanished into thin air, for all intents and purposes. It was impossible, there was always at least somebody up to keep watch during the night and yet despite that a wounded soldier had completely disappeared from right under their noses.

So that was another soldier, gone without a trace.

Captain Clarke's voice was heavy as he said that they could not delay anything to search for him and that they would continue the mission as planned.

###

The island seemed to be getting colder as the days went on, which was a natural occurrence for once. As fall drew to an end the cold of winter was now fast encroaching, but that didn't change the fact that the island was still wet and earthy and dreary. The ever-omnipresent dull blue mist that loomed over them all was growing thicker, closer. Diamond dust with the color of gold shimmered in the air, eerie yet beautiful all at once.

After the incident with Sam Captain Clarke was now much firmer with how things were run around the unit. They could not afford even a second of letting their guards down. They must always assume a possible hostile force nearby at all times. All were on high alert for the duration of the long trek to the coastal village without a name.

The longer they stayed on this island the more she noticed how much strange the island was, seeing little things that were causing the mission to feel more like a bad fever dream with each passing hour. They passed through remnants of human activity that seemed far more recent than it was possible. Modern-looking military jeeps and trucks and even tanks that couldn't possibly have come from the winter tourism or the mining during decades past, but these looked positively ancient, overgrown with moss and rust and flowers. The odd thing was that nobody commented on it, as if the things they had seen days past had numbed them all to the inherent strangeness of such a high number of American military equipment that she recognized from Iraq and Afghanistan being overgrown in the woods as if years had gone by.

It brought back numb memories of her time in service, colored memories that she remembered with a neutral outlook with one that was fearful instead.

When Lansing had asked her if there was anyone she'd had regrets with she never intended to give a straight reply but there was someone she thought about, and it was just a kid, that was the worse one for what it was worth.

She never thought about it all this time but now the sight of these out-of-place trucks and tanks were making her think back to Eric and his little cheerleader of a sister she'd never met and the kid that killed him.

She tried not to think about it.

Nobody else besides her superior knew about what she had done, not a report was lodged containing information about kids being shot. As far as history would be concerned it was just another runaway IED, like the ones which had claimed too many a soldier's life. Even if it get out what would they do about it? He was a local kid and she was an American soldier who arguably acted in self-defense. Maybe on some level it was wrong but she got away with it all the same and never thought back about it.

He was trying to kill her so she did the right thing, that she escaped consequences even if some people back home might have called for her head was inconsequential to the whole ordeal and it never weighed on her conscience at all.

Until now.

And there was also the inexplicable feeling Rachel had that she was being watched.

It wasn't even a rational feeling, something like seeing a light glint off in the distance or a suspiciously still bird or something. It was just a disturbing feeling that came from her gut.

Someone or something was watching her.

Not them, not the group, but just her. And the feeling of it, even when resting in a tent, was truly getting under her skin.

Maybe it had something to do with the bizarre cluster of rock formations they passed through – for all intents and purposes they were simply that, rocks, inanimate formations of minerals, but these rocks were shaped roughly like men, with crudely shaped legs and arms and heads that seemed to be facing them like department store dummies as they walked through. It was fucking creepy how the 'faces' of the humanoid rocks were all turned towards her – not in a vague direction towards the group, but pointed specifically at her - on both sides of the trail and she found it creepy because it did not at all fit her view of how the world worked. There was nothing logical about it, other than it simply was.

She alone out of everyone else noticing that these humanoid rocks that nobody seemed bothered by were all staring at her everywhere she looked, their directions seemingly changing to maintain their gaze on her whenever she turned away and looked back. It was something she'd never thought she'd come across.

The disused military equipment was one thing but these creepy as fuck human-shaped rocks were another and she asked out loud, "Does anyone else find this mildly unsettling?"

The answers she heard unsettled her even more.

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't you see the rocks?"

She pointed them out, both sides with a wild finger.

"These rocks, statues, whatever they are - why do they look like people?"

"They're just rocks, Yun."

"I don't see anything out of the ordinary."

"There's nothing here. Let's keep going."

Maybe she really was losing her mind and just hadn't processed it yet. Her trains of thought were running so wild she couldn't even distinguish who was who from the voices, just the information that they carried with them. She didn't mention the fact that the rocks seemed to be moving to stare at her because not even she could believe it herself.

Other things that she just couldn't explain no matter what, and her inability to properly rationalize and come up with an explanation that suited her scientific preferences was driving her mad.

Was it a hallucination? Were they all seeing hallucinations, things that really weren't there?

No, not all of it was. Some of the surreal sights they stumbled across, she knew for certain was real, not a product of her imagination.

Like the grove that was filled with red. All this time the forests and wilderness they were going through were composed of dull green trees covered by a layer of mist, the picture of the time between the end of fall and the beginnings of winter, yet here they were walking through a forest that was covered in vivid shades of red leaves like it had missed the memo that fall was already coming to an end. The leaves were practically falling like rain, blanketing the forest floor and showering vibrant blood-crimson over them.

If there was any consolation to be had it was that this time the group seemed aware of the presence of the red trees. And they looked about with varying looks of curiosity, concern, and awe. Karen seemed enraptured by the sight, her mouth gaping open as she stared around her with bright eyes.

Mike did not share her enthusiasm. He looked like he wanted to get out of the red forest as quickly as he could.

"It's a sign of radiation contamination," he murmured. "Like the red forest, in Chernobyl. It turned red because the leaves absorbed too much radiation and died."

"Wait, is this area radioactive?" asked Karen, understandable alarm in her voice.

"Still looks beautiful," Arcady countered. She sighed. "I wish we could take pictures. If we're going to die, at least there's a chance we can die in a beautiful place."

"Nobody else is going to die on my watch," said Captain Clarke. He seemed shocked at the scientific consultant's sudden bout of fatalism.

As frightening as the thought the forest they were walking through was radioactive was, Rachel actually felt calmed by that notion. A forest contaminated by radiation was rational. Scary but easily explainable by science and logic.

Things that could be explained by science and logic were things she found comforting.

She was also rather surprised that Mike knew about the existence of the red forest of the Chernobyl Zone, though she kept that thought to herself.

Still, there was nothing she could do to rationally explain how it was only this one specific stretch of the island wilderness that was colored bright red and that she still found unnerving.

"Yun?" someone said, breaking her out of her blank thoughts.

"What is it?" It was Brock Casey, one of the soldiers she didn't bother getting to know beyond the name. He was a tall, strong-built looking man with a stubbled goatee, black hair, who was looking into her with concern in his eyes.

"You looked kind of spaced out there. Checking up to see if you were okay."

"I'm fine."

"You don't look fine," he responded. Then a pat on the shoulder. "Look, this island's messing us all up, okay? Not that anyone seems to point that out," he snorted. "Mike's having a hard time too – I know the two of you have got some beef with each other-"

"We don't have any 'beef'," she emphasized, and it was the truth – at least from her eyes. She never held grudges. Nothing was ever personal.

Brock held up his hand. "Point is, you have to forgive him if he's more than a little snappy, okay? I don't think he's in the right mind to make rational decisions now. You see, he and Sam were-"

"I know."

Abruptly the look he gave her shifted to one of surprise, but just as quickly it adjusted back to a neutral expression. The effect was uncanny. "Then you know what I mean. This job's really piling on the stress. Look at Lansing," he pointed out, "She's our psychologist but if anything she looks like she's the one who needs psychiatry now. Not that I blame her, of course. I don't think she's really up for any kind of mission."

He was right, even from a distance she could tell Karen seemed terrified even though nothing truly frightening was happening at the moment. Her fingers were nervously thumbing at the safety of her assault rifle, and she was constantly flicking back and forth at the trees as if she could see something out the corner of her eye every time she looked away.

For a moment she stared for longer than usual at thin space in the forest, then shook her head as if to shake off migraines.

Maybe she was seeing things that weren't there, too. If so Rachel actually felt just slightly comforted, knowing she wasn't the only one.

"So you see," Brock continued, "If you need to talk to someone I'm always here, okay?"

"Yeah, sure." He nodded and looked off, looking pleased.

If she was going a little bit crazy then who was to say everyone else was? Brock looked lucid, completely aware of himself and his surroundings for what it was worth.

Again and again the island showed itself to be a paradox, a place both disturbing in ways she couldn't explain and yet beautiful at the same time.

The red forest was one. The deer was another.

Like the forest she knew this one was real because the others in the group reacted to its presence.

It came out of nowhere and in their state of high alert the soldiers, and Rachel herself, raised their weapons at the crashing sound coming from the trees.

From what they had seen so far they were right to assume whatever they came across to be hostile, and that the source of the sudden disturbance was a monster, multiple monsters, mutated monstrosities that were craving for their flesh.

Yet that was not what they got.

"Woah!"

The animal hopped out gracefully from the brush and landed on the trail, seemingly oblivious to the startled humans in front of it.

The deer standing before them was majestic. It was a huge male stag, maybe an elk, far bigger than any man and standing tall and proud with no hint of timidity. The antlers stretched majestic and wide, and spread across them, enwrapped like veins or curling vines were orange growths that glowed in the mist.

It was strangely beautiful.

The deer flicked one of its ears. When it turned to look at the humans with a hint of curiosity Rachel could see that the eyes glowed blue. Even with her rifle raised at it she couldn't help but feel the pang of curiosity, a desire to understand more of the deer, know why it was.

Perhaps it could be explained as simply a case of island gigantism. Or, more darkly and more realistically, the elk was infected with the mysterious pathogen plaguing this island, even if it did not seem as aggressive as the rest of its mutated counterparts.

Other than the abnormal size, the glowing patterns of veins covering the antlers and the blue eyes the deer didn't display any symptoms of sickness. In fact, it looked remarkably healthy, no sores or tumors or anything of the sort, nor malnourishment. It was muscular, its coat thick and shaggy and the color of winter-snow white.

The deer looked away after only a moment of curious observation of the humans, as if unbothered by their guns and their presence. It looked about like it was watching its territory, no tension or signs of it being ready to run at a moments' notice. Hell, it was even larger than the bear that attacked her and Sam the day before. Rachel wouldn't be surprised if its new size and strength had given the prey animal a new kind of confidence about itself.

While everyone else had their guard up despite their obvious startlement and the mutated deer's disinterest in them, Arcady seemed enraptured by the sight of the animal. She slowly lowered her rifle, and took a step forward.

"Arcady? What are you doing?"

She raised a single hand upwards, palm open, as if to tell the group to lower arms.

"I don't think it's dangerous, guys."

As fascinated as she was by its physiology Rachel disagreed, with the way things worked on this island there was no telling.

The deer now glanced back at them, looking specifically at Arcady. It tilted its head as if curious in this new development, and bent down to further observe the small human.

"Doctor? I really think you need to step back," Mike warned as he took a step forward with one hand raised and ready to pull the geologist back while his other remained gripping the rifle and training it on the deer.

"He doesn't mean us any harm."

There was absolute conviction in her voice, the kind she'd only heard before from suicidally naïve animal lovers who were convinced they had forged a 'bond' with a wild animal, except she suddenly realized that at this moment, Arcady really knew what she was talking about.

She slowly reached her hand out, and the deer leaned in closer. It sniffed her hand, and then lowered its snout in reception.

There was a rare look of total joy on Arcady as she then proceeded to stroke and pet the deer. She even giggled childishly. "He likes it," she said, and again there was absolute sincerity in her voice that wasn't that of a naïve animal lover projecting their hopes onto an animal.

Rachel thought back to her overhearing of the two men who shared the same memories of the same wife.

She thought back to the horrific living nightmare of knowing the raw terror of Sam's head as she was dragged off to die.

No fucking way.

There wasn't any other way to explain it.

Arcady knowing what the deer was feeling, the way the deer seemed to be sharing in Arcady's mutual delight.

The only way she could explain it was that Arcady and the deer were mentally connected in the way that she couldn't explain yet.

Suddenly she recoiled, turning to the trees with a look of fright.

So did the deer, at the exact same time and in the same direction.

"Dr. Arcady? What's got you so spooked?" Captain Clarke asked.

Mike's free hand was right by the scruff of her collar, ready to grab her and pull her back.

And the moment he did she screamed grabbing at her head – and the deer shrieked too, rearing up on its hind legs to its towering, massive full height, and in that moment Rachel realized how much Mike had potentially screwed up.

It screamed like it was in pain and panic, and then charged right through the group.

Everybody scrambled and dodged when the deer galloped through them as if they weren't even there, its powerful legs kicking up dirt and rock. Half a second too late and someone could have sustained terrible injuries, broken bones at the least. The deer leapt over a pile of rock and hopped off into the direction of the trees, where it continued to run until it had vanished from view.

"What was that all about," Clarke accused, staring at Arcady.

Arcady, however, wasn't even looking at him. Instead her attention was completely drawn to the same spot she and the deer had been looking at, and in a hushed voice, she said, "There's someone watching us from over there."

It took a moment before the gravity of what she said gripped Captain Clarke and he started ordering his men.

"Take point."

The men took their positions. He turned to Arcady and asked, "Someone? What do you mean by someone? Is it one of Alpha team?"

She shook her head, slowly, with hesitance. "I… I don't know. I just know that it's a somebody. Not a something."

"And how are you so confident about knowing that?"

Another shake of the head. "I don't know. I just do."

Captain Clarke looked frustrated at her vague information, but seemed ready to accept that the geologist was no longer of any help in this situation. "Everyone, watch your six! Let's go check it out!"

Mike protested immediately, "Captain, you can't be serious-"

"We have to make sure, Cox!" he reprimanded without looking at him. Captain Clarke took the lead, walking forth with his rifle raised and ready to fire while the rest of them all followed behind, ready to spot any other possible threat that surrounded them.

They were walking right into the thick grove of the trees where visibility was limited, and Rachel didn't like it.

She really didn't like it.

"Anyone there?" Captain Clarke yelled. No reply. The forest remained utterly silent.

"Captain, I don't like this," Mike said, echoing Rachel's own thoughts.

The captain's voice was grim. "Neither do I, but we have to make sure."

They crept forward slowly, still no sound or reaction from anything. "If you're one of the survivors from Alpha Team then you can come out! We're here to secure you!"

Still no reply.

The captain bent down to have a better look at the earth under him, and Rachel came up, her attention being drawn to where he was looking. It was easily noticeable with how fresh it was – footprints, made with heavy boots in the wet soil-

"Look! Over there, he's getting away!"

Brock's alerting yell brought everybody's attention up to see the figure running away wildly further into the treeline.

"Get after him!" Captain Clarke ordered.

If there was anything in their favor it was that the man was not very good at running away. He stumbled, tripped over himself or on vegetation, and it was clear he was not a man who was familiar with the rugged terrain of the island. But that brought with it its own set of dangers. The man not knowing where he was going meant it wouldn't be surprising if he ended up stumbling into threats that could endanger somebody else, so he would need to be caught fast.

Eventually he scrambled his way through a tight and treacherous passage of thorn bramble that proved to be but a temporary obstacle. It was too tight for the men in the group to go through but Rachel gritted her teeth and slid through the same passage the man used, her smaller frame allowing her to do so.

"Rachel!" a female voice called out, maybe Karen. Nobody else followed her in, only their cries and warnings coming afterwards.

They were probably right, because it was not a pleasant way. She hissed as she felt fresh cuts opening on her clothes, on her skin, on her cheek, thorns jabbing and ripping at small parts of her body. After the brambles was a small steep hill that she ran her way down, stumbling and tripping at the bottom and landing on her chin. She got up only to be met with the surprise that was the strange man.

He was practically within arms' reach, and he was still scrambling to get up on his feet, having clearly rolled his way down the hill instead.

Before he could get off any further she grabbed her assault rifle, and pointing the weapon into the air she let burst a round of warning shots.

The man froze.

"Don't move. Identify yourself," she ordered.

Now that she was closer, she could see that the man was clearly dressed in an olive-green military uniform, but dirty and stained.

"How do I know you're not real?"

His voice was hoarse. Like it hadn't spoken in a long, long time.

She slowly walked forward, placed her hand on his shoulder, and forcefully pulled him around to face her.

He had definitely seen better days, his face drawn by long bony cheeks and a haggard beard that lent him the appearance of a feral man, accentuated by the strange unfocused look in his eyes. His hair was tangled and unkempt, and she could see traces of dried blood leaking from some unseen wound on his scalp onto his forehead. There were bloodstains everywhere on his person now that she took a closer look, including a splotch that covered his military identification.

He stared at her with wide eyes and a numbly gaping mouth, and she flashed him her ID. "Rachel Yun. Civilian consultant, part of the rescue team they sent."

"Rescue team?" he repeated, voice completely slack. Without a word he reached his hands out and grasped onto her cheek. It was not a gesture she was expecting and Rachel suddenly felt rather uncomfortable, not knowing how to react as the strange man touched around her face, her neck all without any hint of attraction and rather one of incredulousness, as if the man couldn't believe there really was a person here that was real and could be touched.

"You're real. Are you?"

Something about the way he spoke put her off. She would have expected some kind of hope, validation or happiness at the possibility of salvation, but his tone was completely flat. Dry.

"Last time I checked I was real."

He stared at her for several long seconds, before letting loose a chuckle that only served to unsettle her more. It was abrupt how the smile appeared on him and that he was laughing slowly, with no hint of warmth or sincerity behind the reptilian smile.

"Well, that's what Jenny said too," he muttered, apparently to himself rather than to her.

"Who the hell is Jenny?"

"She even took her clothes off for me," he continued his mumbling rambles, ignoring her words, "Made me touch her and it was so real. It felt so goddamn real. Then I realized none of it was and right away she snapped out of existence. You, you're not real. I wanted someone to save me so this place, it's conjured someone up but she's not real-"

She tried to slap him, hoping it would jolt him back to reality.

And without missing a beat he grabbed the incoming open palm with his fist, his eyes still staring ahead into her face.

She gasped. His grip was incredibly strong despite the bony look of his hand, and his skin cold and clammy to the touch.

"I guess you're real. Why…"

He looked down at the hand where she was struggling to free herself from his grasp.

"Why did you try to attack me?"

He tilted his head, his eyes gaining a pointed look. "I don't understand…"

And while he was focused on that Rachel clenched her other hand and sent the fist straight into his face.

With the temporary reprieve she moaned and tenderly massaged her hand. The experience was incredibly painful and frightening, and now she decided that she wasn't going to take any more chances with this insane man. She was fairly certain he wasn't infected – if he was he would have been a feral lunatic like his other unlucky comrades – but he was certainly dangerous.

It took several seconds of no noise before she realized the man wasn't getting up, or doing anything one would expect a man who had been punched to the ground to do. He was looking up from his spot, staring into her with those empty eyes.

"I guess you're really real. Owe you… apologies, then. I'm sorry."

Rachel raised an eyebrow, feeling unconvinced. But still, she cautiously offered a hand to pull him up.

He stared at it with the blank, empty eyes for several seconds, as if wondering why she was extending her arm, before reaching his own hand out to return it.

"Forgive me," he said in the eerily soulless voice, "I didn't know for real what you and your team really were. One mistake and it could have turned out I was running off of a cliff or you and your friends were… one of those things out there and-" He continued into a garbling mix of words she couldn't recognize, only picking out some things like 'waited very long' and 'unreal' and 'miracle'.

"Listen," she said, hoping to get him lucid again. "Can you identify yourself?"

He stared at her for several seconds. "Corporal Darren Hughes."

Darren.

Darren.

The name sounded familiar. Didn't Marcus mention a Darren on his audio recording?

It was a question for later. She nodded in affirmation. "Alright, Hughes. Walk in front of me now, we'll reunite with the rest of my team."

He mumbled some sort of agreement and did exactly as she told him – and it still startled her, how he was yet completely obedient to her orders. There was no resistance whatsoever as she made sure to walk behind him with her assault rifle pointed at his back.

When they reunited with the rest of the team Captain Clarke looked like he was about to chew her out for disobeying what she assumed was an order to return, but the sight of the haggard soldier meekly following behind her changed all of that. After all this time, they had finally found a survivor from Alpha team, and hopes were high that they could get some answers.

But as the minutes went on, it slowly came upon them that their hopes for concrete answers were not to be.

"You were dropped off a week ago," said Captain Clarke, "With orders to investigate and secure classified VIPs. Why did communications cease?"

"A week?" Darren repeated back at him. "You mean we were gone for a week?"

"Yes."

He stared at him and gave a dry chuckle like he knew far more than he was letting up. "No. Far longer than that."

"How long?"

This time he was able to provide a reaction immediately, if not an answer. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out a small, leather-backed notebook that was splotched with stains. He flipped through the pages and Rachel could see little tally marks.

The tally marks covered an entire page.

And another page.

And another page after that.

"Four months, by my estimate."

"Impossible," breathed Mike.

"I don't make up things now. This is what I recorded about my experience and that's what it is." Somehow the tone of his answer made it worse, no hesitation or disbelief in his own answer or how far it stretched credibility, only the simple intonation that he was telling the truth.

"It's only been a week."

"No."

He scrunched his eyebrow, looking mildly confused. "A week? No. Much, much longer than that. I've seen a lot of days and nights go by. Four months. I know that it's been four months."

Rachel shook her head, feeling another onset of a headache coming that she tried her best to block out. She didn't know how to digest this new information – the most likely explanation was that he was suffering from whatever was giving them all, in various degrees of severity, the inability to perceive the flow of time accurately, with gaps of memory and the apparent realizations that days had passed without them even comprehending it. She could see Brock nervously rub his chin in the back, apparently sharing her frustration.

"Look," said Arcady, clearly frustrated with the lack of progress they were making, "Regardless of how long you think it's been, what happened to the rest of the team?"

"Team? What team?"

"The unit you were airdropped in with!"

Another blank stare. "Oh. That team."

"Marcus!" Rachel yelled, earning a look of displeasure from Captain Clarke. She ignored it and took out a picture of her brother that she had been carrying, and showed it to Darren's face. "This man was in your unit, Marcus Yun! What happened to him?"

He didn't even look at the picture, just stared at her. "I don't know a Marcus. You know a Marcus?"

"Answer the question!"

He just stared at her pointedly for several seconds.

Said not a word that was a concrete answer.

"…I don't know," was all he could say.

"And the rest of Alpha team?" Captain Clarke cut back in before Rachel could interject.

"…I don't know."

"This is a waste of time," Mike said, and Rachel agreed. She nervously bit on her own finger in frustration. Darren was just mentally gone, that much was obvious, and he wasn't going to be of any help to the mission unless they were able to bring him to a state of lucidity. "Karen? You're the psychologist. What's happening with the corporal here?"

Karen looked to her and then to him with frozen eyes. A bead of sweat went down her forehead. "PTSD can manifest in very different symptoms, depending on the individual. It's possible that what happened to Alpha Team had affected him so deeply, he's retreated into a state of amnesia to protect himself. It's been documented before, I'm sure you've all heard of what happened with Chris Redfield back a few years ago -"

"is it just me, or does it sound like you're trying to use PTSD to explain something that you don't understand?" Mike snapped, his tone bitter.

"Well do you have any better suggestions?!" Karen snapped back. It struck Rachel that this was the first time she had seen Karen appear angry on this mission.

"Right, let's try this for starters then," Brock responded, cutting in between Karen and Mike, and he turned to Darren. "Corporal, do you even remember the mission that you were assigned on?"

"Mission? Mission. A mission, yeah," the corporal mumbled.

"_Now _you remember."

Conrad, somewhere off in the back. The biochemist-medic sounded bitter too, having never said a word before all this.

"Mission… our mission…"

"Yeah? Spit it out," Mike said.

"It was to rescue VIPs that had gotten lost in the area, wasn't it?" offered Brock.

Darren looked up at him, staring straight ahead, and he said nothing. All Rachel could do next was cast a suspicious glare at Captain Clarke before the rest of them decided there was nothing else they could gain from the amnesiac soldier.


	8. The Lighthouse

**The Lighthouse**

The same barking came again about an hour or so later after they were joined by Darren. Again it sounded like that of an excited dog. Again it sounded like it came from the same distance. But there was something not quite right about its nature that she couldn't quite put her finger on. It sounded like a dog, but at the same time, not really like a dog. More animal-like than the humanlike screams from before that she now presumed to be those of infected mutants, but still nothing she could really find an explanation for.

It could only mean that the animal, if it really was an animal, was following them and maintaining its distance, but nobody acknowledged really acknowledged the mysterious animal.

In any case their objective was still the same even after recovering one of the members of Alpha team. With him completely unwilling or unable to help in their investigation they would now continue their journey to the abandoned village where hopefully they could find more clues about what happened here.

###

Late afternoon approached and nobody was happy about it. Their maps had said that they should be approaching the village by now but it didn't seem like they were anywhere near it yet and morale was getting low. Nobody really wanted to camp out for another night in the wilderness, even if they were more prepared this time around for whatever was probably lurking in the forest.

They did make conversation, though, even if Rachel herself wasn't an active participant.

Overhearing things could lend her information that others might not think much of but could offer her much in her own, personal, scientific investigation.

"Arcady, Arcady, Arcady," Brock sing-songed. "Now that's not a surname I've really heard of before. What's the story behind it?"

A little laugh, like it was an embarrassing memory. "It's Russian. Over there, it'd be 'Arkady' with a K. My parents emigrated from the Soviet Union, so I used to be called the evil Russian spy or the communist back in school. Kids, you know."

She sighed, sounding resigned at a distant memory, her eyes peering down at her boots.

"There something you wanna tell us, Julie?" Karen asked in a soft voice.

Rachel looked towards the conversation, and she saw that Arcady was biting her lip, had a hesitant look upon her. Several times she glanced off into the trees like there was something there

A deep sigh.

"I suppose I can tell you guys. I had two kids where I come from, a boy and a girl. Warren, and little Emily. They were the greatest gifts I could ever ask for."

"…had?" Mike said slowly. She could tell he didn't want to accidentally upset Arcady, that this was probably not a topic she found comfortable.

Her eyes were distant, and sorrowful. "Car accident three years ago," she said, and she didn't elaborate beyond that. She glanced back towards the darkness of the treeline, before redirecting her attention to a little mud puddle that they were passing by. For a few seconds she stopped to look at her own reflection, no major changes in expression before moving on.

There was a brief silence that followed, quiet mourning among most of them for Arcady's deceased children. Rachel said nothing, just took in the information without filing it as important for her own reasons the same way the information of the soldiers' wives was.

"And your… husband?" Karen asked.

A dark, bitter look now that could have been anything from disgust to hatred. "We don't talk to each other anymore."

More silence, her hard tone making it clear she didn't want to talk about it. Apparently realizing the mood that had then befallen the group, however, Arcady looked to Brock instead, and spoke to him.

"What about you, huh? How did you end up here?"

"Oh, me? I was in the Army first for about fifteen years, then they recruited me as an operative for the DSO about a year after the Tall Oaks outbreak – then two years after that I decided it just wasn't for me and decided to go back to the Army, and another two years after that here we are. A reversal of how it usually turns out, I guess," he said with a chuckle.

"DSO, the Division of Security Operations? Our very own counter-bioterrorism unit?"

"The one and only. Received training from Leon S. Kennedy himself."

"Who?" Karen asked, looking genuinely confused.

"Oh, he's-"

"Wait, so let me get this straight," Mike cut off, "You signed up with the Army first, more than ten years of experience, then the DSO picked you up and when you decided to be done with fighting bioterrorism you returned back to the Army… to be a soldier on the field?"

"That's right."

There was a look Mike was giving him that Rachel couldn't quite pinpoint. It wasn't suspicion, far from it, but it was just a curious, earnestly confused look instead. It was a notion Rachel shared. For his age and decades of field experience, Brock could easily get himself a position as an officer. Maybe the reason he chose to continue being a field operative was because he wanted to stay close to the men and women doing the fighting, but she didn't speculate much.

Brock smiled and waved his head with a comical roll of the eyes, a gesture of 'roll with it, that's how my life went'.

Mike shrugged.

###

After two more hours of trekking the sun was now well into setting, coloring the sky a brilliant orange. And at the same time they were finally reaching their next destination, the hill from where they were walking now offered them a view of the ocean's horizon, where they could see the shapes of buildings.

She was walking at the end of the line, exhausted but not yet feeling ready for rest, but rather feeling the need to keep herself awake for what could possibly be a trove of new information that could shed more light on the mystery.

She bit herself on the lip, hard, hoping the sharp intake of pain would be enough to keep her awake for now.

It was then that she heard it.

She froze when she heard the sound. It was a long, terrible wail of pain far in the distance.

After a moment it came again, a distant and yet distinctly humanlike moan that sounded like that of a woman's. By this point she was certain it was not an animal anymore, not after the things they had encountered.

It almost sounded like Sam, impossible though it was.

She stared out into the trees and wasn't aware somebody was calling out to her until she felt the pebble that he threw at her, and glanced around to see Brock standing there with worry written all over him. "You okay there?"

She looked back towards the trees, as silent as they had ever been.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good."

It wasn't a village that they were exploring, the overgrown moss-decayed skeleton of a village was much more of an apt description. It was clear that despite what they had been told about there still being a few civilians still staying on the island, nobody had inhabited this place for a very, very long time.

The rust, decay and overgrowth spoke about that. Several of the buildings were not even recognizable anymore, having long since collapsed into heaps of brick and metal overtaken by vegetation.

"Darren?" Captain Clarke asked, "Do you remember coming to this place with the rest of your men?"

"…I don't think so, no," was the monotone reply.

Even then, there were still little signs that people used to live here. Black crusted growths on plates of food that were long left abandoned to exposure, chopping blocks were freshly caught fish were gutted and sold, where they could still see the dried-out and foul-smelling skeletons of abandoned catches.

The fishing village was tiny and that meant it was easy to search it, seeing as almost every building was in sight of each other. Cartoon animals were painted onto the walls of what was once the children's school, piles of moth-eaten books still left on their desks. The local church was still standing, and inside they found nothing but pews and books of prayer songs. The fungal growths grew strong here, its veins covering the walls and growing over the cracked stained-glass window of Mary and the Son.

The buildings revealed nothing of particular interest to their investigation, although there was a nasty surprise awaiting Mike when he found himself trying to open a stuck door. The wood structure had decayed so much that he accidentally fell through when he kicked the door too hard – and the discovering awaiting him on the other side was a skeletal corpse, brittle and overgrown by fungus that had literally stuck it to the door itself.

After recovering from the horror of finding something like that however, it was discovered that there were no dog-tags on the skeleton, and that combined with the skeleton's slumped posture most likely meant it belonged to one of the people who used to live in this village, having died through an accident or natural causes before nature overwhelmed their corpse. The thought that they died a lonely death in a town that was nearing total abandonment sent shudders through most of the group.

The ocean lent a salty taste to the air here, and on the pier they could see the lighthouse, where its beacon had once guided wayward ships to this island. Having looked through almost every ruin in the village and finding no useful information, it was decided that they would look through this lighthouse now.

When they got closer to the lighthouse they could see that growing on the walls and brick of the building were mats of fungus, clumps of the muddy orange crusted stuff, mixing with other mats of green moss and the black oil that leaked down from the flesh-covered wall in trails. It wasn't a welcome sight, to say the least, and with silent agreement the group braced themselves for oncoming danger.

Brock was the first to open the door, and the first thing they realized immediately was that the door didn't creak or have to be forced open. It opened smoothly, and that was the first clue that someone had been in this lighthouse relatively recently.

"Looks clear," he said, going in with assault rifle raised.

The lighthouse wasn't built with a single long chamber in mind, their heads were covered by the wood of a second floor and so on. Books were strewn about the room they found themselves in, having dropped off of ancient mold-covered shelves that looked like they hadn't been replaced since the early 20th century. But otherwise, this lighthouse was remarkably intact. There was even a table with a chess set placed upon it, the game being played by the lighthouse keeper long ago having long been frozen in an eternal standstill.

Slowly, they explored each floor of the lighthouse, their boots kicking up golden dust with every creaky step they took. With each minute passing the sense of hope that they would find something worthwhile diminished. The lighthouse looked long abandoned just like the rest of the village, the only information it could tell being the life of the keeper who was long gone. There were amenities that would be considered strange for a lighthouse, a room of bunk beds and a tiny and a filthy bathroom, but other than that, nothing out of the ordinary.

The one thing that looked out of place, though, was the green military canvas bag that they found on one of the rooms. It looked recent, could only have been left behind by Alpha team. When they opened it, it turned out to be a good find. Brock grinned as he opened the bag up.

"Check out these guys. Bet they'll come in handy one way or another," he said with a smile as he passed the small dark green canister-like devices, shaped like small beer cans, around to other soldiers in the room. Karen fumbled with it and the thing almost slipped from her hands, only for Mike to catch it before it hit the ground.

"Careful there!" he hissed, glared warningly at Karen. "These are flash grenades. You don't want one of these going off right in front of you!"

"But a flash grenade will just stun you for a bit, right? A big flash of light, a loud bang that rings in your ears?" she asked.

"Karen, sweetie," Rachel answered bitingly, "A flash grenade is a _grenade_. That's an explosive device. One goes off in your hand, you're gonna have a hard time touching yourself for the rest of your life."

Her cheeks flushed red and she said nothing else.

The cache of flash grenades that they secured aside though, it wasn't until they reached the top floor that something truly out of the ordinary happened.

"Do you hear that?" Conrad asked. The two of them were the only ones currently in the top floor, a tiny lonely room with only a dusty sleeping bag, a dead lantern and a broken window to the ocean outside.

Rachel paused. Concentrated her hearing.

There was indeed something, above them. It was hard to tell what it was, but it sounded like metal creaking. Or something wheezing.

The noise was constant, stopping and repeating every few seconds. A long, whining, wheezing noise.

There was also some kind of fluid leaking from between the planks. They both looked down at it as it dripped. It was thick, viscous fluid, black like oil.

"You see that?" she pointed to a panel on the ceiling. A hatch leading to an attic.

There wasn't a ladder anywhere in the room, so she told him to help hold her up, where she unhooked the latch. A thick cloud of shimmering yellow dust came upon them and she coughed hoarsely, but persevered through it.

"Lift me harder!"

He groaned with effort, pushing himself higher until her fingers could grasp the edges of the hatch.

Legs kicking in the air she clambered her way into the hidden attic. The air reeked of something hideously foul, and turning on her flashlight she could see rows upon rows of vases, candlesticks, photo frames, all sorts of useless little trinkets.

And the wheezing sound.

It sounded… strange.

Like a man in pain.

Preparing herself as much as she could turned to the other side behind and shined her flashlight upon the sight.

The man, thing, whatever the hell it was, looked at her with complete anguish on his face. He opened his mouth and out came a hellish moan of pain.

She gasped and dropped her flashlight, not quite prepared for the shock of it.

A man in a state like that simply had no right to still be alive but against all logic there he was, breathing and moaning in a clear state of agony. His skin was bloodied, stained with red and the vomit-colored stains she now associated with the mutagenic fungus.

His abdomen, the whole of it, had been ripped clean from his neck all the way to his crotch. It was splayed open, masses of fungus blooming out of his torso and growing over everywhere, the floors and the walls behind the man where he was sitting up against. Like the man in the coffin, only this man was clearly still alive. The fungus had grown all over the wall, she could see the lichen merging with his back, his neck and his head.

It wasn't the worst part, though. By far the most obscene sight was the mass that was next to the man who had been ripped open like a zipper.

His internal organs, what seemed like the entirety of his abdominal internal organs, were literally outside of his body, fused to the wall by the same fungal growths that covered everything around him. She could see the esophagus, stomach, liver, everything, the intestinal linings all still connecting his displaced organs to the top and bottom of his original body like entangled wires and tentacles.

The heart, exposed to the air and clear for her to see, continued beating. In fact she could see it actually start beating faster as the man became agitated in her presence, pumping blood through the organs and through the distended fleshy growths to his body, supplying oxygen to his brain. All his organs were pulsating, functioning despite the fact they were outside the body they were supposed to be in. Even his lungs were squeezing, processing air, each pump correlating with the frantic breaths he was taking.

What was happening was completely impossible, except there it was staring her in the face.

"Can you… hear me?" she asked, not even sure if the man was cognizant.

"Don't hurt me," he moaned in a weakened voice. "Please, I need help…"

That confirmed he was still conscious, aware of his situation. And he wanted release from it. Except that wasn't what she wanted, right?

"Are you with Alpha Team?"

He stared at her blankly for several seconds before slowly making a single nod. She could tell it was taking every last inch of his strength to do so, like the very act of moving a muscle was painful for him.

"What the hell happened, why did you all drop off the face of the earth?"

"Mission priority changed… we were to go to the Garden… the lab, facility where all this started, hidden from the world somewhere near the ski resort… a black lodge at the top of the mountain…"

His face twisted from something, and again he opened his mouth to scream in agony. "It hurts!"

It didn't exactly answer the question but it did provide new information. A research facility not far from the ski resort? But that would place it right in the center of the island, far away from the coast.

"What happened to you? Were you attacked by something?"

"No!" he howled. "Systemic organ failure… the bloom, it was killing me. Burnt like a fire inside me! Too hot in me, too hot. I wanted them to... to have a look… let them see it themselves, and it was moving like snakes."

For the first time she noticed things she didn't initially realize about the room like the dried bloodstains everywhere, the opened military-issue first-aid kit nearby, abandoned sterilizing equipment and a bloodied scalpel. This attic had been repurposed for surgery.

Surgery on this man.

She only dimly realized the other members of the group were now climbing into the attic, all of them reacting with horror and disgust at the pitiful man.

"You said it was killing you, this 'bloom'. How are you still alive?"

"Felt like it was killing me… but no. Not death. Mutation. The bloom… changes. Kills others, changes them, but not me. I can't die. It won't let me die."

She said nothing.

Pulled out her pistol, and cocked it. "Do you want to die?"

To her surprise the man reacted with horror. "No! I want to… I want to go home. I want to see my family again! It won't… let me see them!"

"What do you mean, it won't let you see them?"

"The bloom, it corrupts everything. Corrupts without purpose, or direction. Madness."

"What about Marcus Yun? Do you know if Marcus is still alive?" she asked with a greater edge.

As much as she knew she should accept it, if there was even the tiniest sliver of a chance that Marcus was still alive…

"Marcus?" he moaned. "Where's Marcus?"

"What do you mean, 'where's Marcus?' Do you know where Marcus is?"

He stared at dumbly her for several seconds.

"Who is Marcus?" he moaned.

What?

"Are you – are you forgetting things? Marcus Yun, in your unit. Is he dead, is he alive, I need to know!"

He just stared at her, mouth slightly agape. There was a blank sense of confusion with the way he stared.

"He's dead, isn't he."

Still no response, then he moaned, "Help me."

Slowly, she raised her pistol at him, trying to decide if it would be worth it to kill him. There was so little critical information about the situation that it would seem a waste to mercy-kill him, not when he could provide her with so much. But it was clear his mind was shattered. Whether he was even aware of what she was asking him about Marcus, she had no idea. Was it amnesia like the one that struck her what seemed like only days ago? Or something like dementia?

Was the man genuinely confused about her question instead?

In any case, it would appear she wasn't going to get anymore useful information out of him after all.

The man squirmed, his mass of organs twitching and hitching up at the sight of the pistol being pointed at him. He opened his mouth and out came another ungodly moan.

She considered it, whether it would really be doing the right thing to put the man out of his misery.

With that, she wasn't prepared for the gunshot that came out of nowhere.

Blood spurted out of the hole that erupted in the displaced heart, and the man gasped as his organs pulsated even further, blood and fungal fluid gushing out of the heart and pooling across the floor.

Then, one final sigh before it was over.

Every twitching organ became still.

She quietly turned to her side to see Captain Clarke standing there with smoke trailing out of his pistol.

"…why did you do that?"

"He was a good soldier, in a state of suffering nobody should ever be in," was his reply. "Killing him is a mercy."

"He was a source of information."

He shook his head. "It's not worth continuing to let him suffer for it."

She regarded him coldly, and touched her cheek as the man's last words sank deep into her mind, bringing back very recent memories she would rather not think about.


	9. Realization

**Realization**

_The videotape was undated. _

_At some parts it was difficult to make out exactly what was happening, and it wasn't just because of the poor resolution and quality of the video it contained. The inexplicable graphical glitches that plagued several points in the video made the act of viewing it a surreal experience. But what was quite obvious was that it was filmed in the same lighthouse. The man in the attic being the centerpiece of it all. _

_He was groaning in pain, face flushed with fever, and sat on the floor cross-legged and naked from the waist up. "Watch," the man huffed, and then there was a manic grin on his lips like he was merely accepting a drunken challenge. "All of you watch this. You think you can see anyone else doing this? Wanna bet? Feast your eyes."_

_And immediately, with no hesitation whatsoever, he stabbed a scalpel into his abdomen and sliced it right across the belly, blood and orange slime immediately gushing out to pool across the floor. _

_His self-disembowelment was met with moans of disgust and fear, but she could also hear whoops and cheers that could mean anything from joy to excitement. _

_Impossibly unfazed, the man leaned back and with his bare hands, forced the gap in his belly open even wider so they could have a better look. The unseen cameraman even leaned in closer._

_Writing within his stomach were pinkish slithering, rippling things, worms or tentacles or maybe his actual intestines, animated by the infection and readying itself to burst out of his belly and eventually shift its location to the outside of the bodily cavity. The orange fungal sludge rippled within, covering the man's hands in the stuff as they shoved around the organs._

_There should have been shock, disgust, horror. But none of those reactions were audible in the tape. The men were chanting, moaning, giggling at points, even what sounded like wild whoops of joy at him actually daring to cut himself open for all to see. Not a single one sounding particularly coherent as the disemboweled man gutted himself like a fish. No remarking on the horror that was on display in the man's stomach. Some of them even seemed to be talking about unrelated things at all. _

"_Did you see Ellie? They just ripped her head clean off and I swear she was still blinking."_

"_Wish I got that on camera, it'd be blowing on social media." _

_And they cheered and roared with mad laughter, a team succumbed to madness. _

_###_

She didn't know whether to feel more disturbed at the man's self-mutilation or the other men's lack of appropriate reaction to the sight, because the implication she got was that the men simply didn't care anymore.

It all painted the image of a unit that had gone completely insane.

She closed her eyes for several seconds, taking it all in.

It was very, very likely her brother was now dead. Either that, or he had become one of them.

The sooner she accepted it, the better it was.

What mattered now was understanding what it was that had killed him. Done this to the rest of his men, everyone.

While most of the group was asleep she remained awake, having lit the lamp and placed it on the desk. Then she laid out in a neat row all the plastic baggies containing the samples she'd collected over the past days.

And she put out a petri dish, and a microscope.

One by one she carefully examined the samples of flesh and blood under the microscope.

They all exhibited the same alterations, mutations but with varying degrees. Human blood cells that had been altered with a foreign mutagenic body. But it wasn't completely parasitic from the start, despite her earlier assumptions. It almost seemed as if the cells were existing in a state of genetic symbiosis with the foreign contaminants. Under certain states that she didn't know how to replicate yet, they seemed benign.

But only for some samples. Soon, it became clear that while the contaminant's growth was slow, it was still an invasive contagion that replicated within the host's bloodstream and slowly took over body cells, altering them on the molecular-genetic level. In some samples of the 'orange blood', there were almost no intact human cells left – the human blood cells had been transformed into a genetic hybrid with that of the invasive cells, merging with them to become one. It lined up with what she'd seen, the man in the attic and the man in the coffin.

The contaminant, the… 'bloom' as the man as said it, it was a vector of genetic fusion. The bloom overtaking human cells and using them to fuel its own growth as it spread far beyond the original host.

Close examination of the bloom itself revealed that, just as she suspected, it was a fungal lifeform. She saw strands of them moving like lichen, but distinct from what she'd seen of bread mold and yeast in the laboratory.

These men had all been infected with a fungus, one that slowly grew, overwhelmed, grew far out of the original host body in places where the host had fell and fusing them to their surroundings. And they caused behavioral changes as well, if the insane mutated men were of any indication.

But there was a discrepancy there. The men who had attacked their camp still looked human at a glance, yet mentally they were obviously gone, replaced by feral animals that seeked only to spread the infection.

The man in the attic was far, far more horribly mutated than any of them, yet he still retained his mind, self-awareness.

What dictated the degree of mental and behavioral changes caused by the bloom?

The man in the attic had claimed it changed people 'without direction'. What did that mean? That there was no consistency to the behavioral changes? That they would be random, was that what it meant? There was a degree of possibility to that line of thinking, similar biohazardous mutagens were capable of some degree of random mutations, but it didn't answer every question she had about this.

Things she still had to understand.

The vagueness of what she was dealing with was making her uncomfortable. And what the man said…

All throughout the mission, she had been plagued by mysterious and unexplainable occurrences. Like when she forgot an entire two days of her life. And it wasn't just her. There were the men with identical memories of identical wives. And there was… whatever it was that happened when Sam was killed by the bear…

All the surreal little things happening with everyone on the team, whether they talked about it or not.

It was all building up to an uncomfortable conclusion, one that she wasn't sure whether she wanted to confirm.

No, she had to do it.

She hissed as she cut herself with the scalpel, letting the blood drip from the fingertip onto the petri dish.

Then, the examination under the microscope.

Cells.

Foreign fungal cells.

Infesting her DNA.

Her own blood cells mutating before her eyes, dividing into abnormal forms she couldn't recognize, all of it happening right under their noses.

Nothing could stop the sinking feeling of horror in her chest.

"Oh, God."

It was a quiet admission, one that undercut the gravity of what she just discovered. It was already a lingering suspicion she had for some time, a suspicion that only grew more and more as the days went on, but to actually confirm it was something else entirely. She looked up around her, glanced around the room, seeing the golden dust that floated in the air.

The golden diamond dust floating in the air everywhere they went, shimmering like tiny particles of light and fireflies.

It wasn't dust they were walking through. It wasn't dust they were all breathing. It was never simple, pretty diamond dust all along.

"Spores," she mumbled, voice numb with horror. "We've been breathing spores all this time."

She was infected. They were all infected. Hell, on a technical sense she wasn't even human anymore. Not when her DNA was slowly being warped and mutated all this time without her even realizing it.

She was shaking as she got up from her seat, trembling in her step. Never before in her life had she come closer to a realization that there was a very, very good chance everything was going to end very soon.

Stumbling to the sink she turned the faucet on and water spurted out, and she rinsed her face with it.

When she looked up at the mirror her face was dry, like there was never water coming from the century-old faucet at all.

She peered closely into herself. Looked at her eye.

It seemed completely normal, just bloodshot and shadowed from her sleep deprivation and stresses.

She still looked like herself, and that was something good, wasn't it?

It had to be. She numbly bit onto her own finger in her nervousness, taking note of the various scars and injuries she had accumulated over the past few days. Genetic changes would manifest in the replacement of new bodily tissues. What if that was how she was going to be transformed? Fungal growths spurting out of her flesh, replacing lost and wounded pieces of herself. If she were to cut off her finger, right here, right now, would it be replaced with a body part that wasn't really human?

Something popped between her teeth.

Looking down with both dread and surprise she saw something hard and shiny in the sink. Picking it up she pored over it for a second before realizing it was a fingernail. Blood – and a mud-orange stain – covered the bottom of it.

She looked at her fingers. She had been biting at her left thumb and –

It wasn't there. The nail, it had just come off. The flesh of the thumb underneath looked diseased. Small purplish things, almost like miniature tumors, with pale whitish veins growing all over the exposed finger. Greenish yellow pus oozed out of pores on the flesh.

As a matter of fact, all her nails had a yellowish, almost decaying look to them. Horror and morbid fascination was the only thing driving her as she slowly pulled at the nail. There was a dull wet pop, and with a sliding sensation the nail began to rip away off her pointer finger, a long trail of slime hanging from the flesh and the keratin. It was slick, black, oil-like. She gasped at the pain, yet the pain of the act felt numb, and rather than stop she pressed on and squeezed the sickly finger now deprived of its nail.

The lump burst, spraying orange fungal slime onto the mirror.

Her eyes travelled upwards her arm, directing their attention to the bandage that covered one of the nastier wounds she sustained in the bear attack.

She hesitated.

Then slowly, already knowing what she was going to find, she peeled it back, and trails of mud orange fluid began leaking down her arm and dripping into the sink. The gash where her flesh met the bear's teeth was…

Growing over the wound, out of the wound, was flesh marred by lesions that spread from beyond the gash, consuming her skin. They lesions scarred her arm with an ugly crimson red, several of them oozing the vile orange slime together with the black slick. It was subtle, but she swore the growths almost seemed to pulsate in the light. Beyond the immediately affected areas the skin was discolored and bruised, almost purplish, and when she laid a finger on the discolored skin it felt wet with ooze. She could pale white veins under the skin, like tiny roots or weaves of thread.

Mycelia, she realized, it was fungal mycelia. The more she looked at the deformations, the more she realized they resembled clumps of fungal growth.

A falling sensation, almost like she was fainting from the shock.

Somehow she managed to stumble herself outside.

Cold, ocean air against the skin.

She felt herself hanging over the lighthouse railing, looking down at the dark chasm below, practically hyperventilating as she stayed there frozen from the panic attack.

For several seconds she stayed that way, swaying in the air and staring into the yawning abyss. It wouldn't take much for her to just tip over a little bit more and fall, wouldn't it now..?

The only thing that broke her out of her sudden thoughts of suicide was the sudden, involuntary movement in her gut that caused her to keel over and vomit into the ocean. Large sludges of her stomach contents were emptied out and left her gagging and coughing hoarsely, and in the moments that passed since her thoughts were recollected and she gasped in shock at the notion that she had even been considering something as drastic as killing herself for a reason that she couldn't fathom.

Why of all things did suicide enter her mind?

It couldn't be because of some issue within herself, she knew herself too well. What else did that leave? A thought embedded into her by the fungus?

When she heard the distant voice she wasn't even sure if it was real or not.

No, it wasn't in her head, even if that was what she thought at first.

It sounded real, like it was coming from the bottom of the staircase. Somebody near the pier.

"Hush little baby don't say a word, momma's gonna buy you a mockingbird…"

A female voice, singing a lullaby. It sounded somewhat familiar.

What?

She peered down at the pier. It was hard to make out in the darkness, but there was somebody there in the dark, crouched on the pier side and apparently looking down into the water.

Cautiously she started walking down the circular steps of the lighthouse, her eyes never leaving the silhouette. The singing voice continued drifting up to her.

"And if that mockingbird don't sing, momma's gonna buy you a wedding ring…"

Yes, it really was somebody.

Julie Arcady.

What was the geologist doing here?

She seemed lost in her own thoughts, bent down with her arms reaching out and holding over something like she was hugging somebody, or putting her arms on their shoulders. But there was nothing but thin air in her arms.

Arcady continued to hum the little song to herself, swaying slightly together with whatever it was she was imagining holding in her arms. And now she noticed that Arcady was shaking. Stifling back muffled sobs. "I love you. You know that, right? Mama loves you more than anything else in the world… Don't say that! It's not your Daddy's fault…"

Rachel crept ever closer as Arcady broke off into more mumbling that was becoming increasingly difficult to interpret. It was mixing between slight giggling and sobbing and the effect was disconcerting.

"The store, getting there, it, it seemed so important at the time… you're so big! Both of you, so big. You'd be too heavy for me to carry now!... I'm not calling you fat, where did that come from? Ha… ah ha ha ha ha…"

"Dr. Arcady?"

Silence. The crying and movement abruptly ceased. She just stayed there, completely still for several seconds.

Without really knowing why Rachel thumbed the safety off her sidearm.

"…Rachel?" Arcady said. She looked behind her. "What are you doing here?"

"I heard you. Saw you out here. What were you doing?" she half-lied.

"I… I thought I saw – but…" she trailed off into nothing, glanced back and forth several times at the thin air ahead of her.

"I thought… what was I thinking? God, it was so real."

Her fingers went off her pistol, as she realized that Arcady did not pose a threat. She sat herself down next to the mother. "I heard Sam's voice earlier, too. It sounded pretty real."

"Do you think this island is messing us up?"

Some silence.

"I know that this island is messing us up," she said, truthfully, if uneasily. "You know that, don't you?"

"I don't know," Arcady admitted. "When I saw myself in the mirror earlier I… I swear, I didn't recognize myself. The person looking back at me was a human, but… it just wasn't me. So many things looked off to me. I didn't look like myself, I didn't feel like myself."

A terrified sigh. "Something very wrong's happening to me. To all of us."

"You got that right," Rachel smiled miserably. She rubbed her right fingers over her two nail-less sickly fingers. At least the subtle pain felt real.

"In her last moments," Rachel began, "When Sam was being dragged off by that… thing, I think a bit of her slipped into me. Or something. I don't know how to explain it. I could… feel, exactly what she was feeling, what she was thinking, and she didn't want to die. She wanted me to save her. I saw through her mind as she was dying."

Arcady said nothing back for a long time.

Then finally, "I think… you know, as well as I do, that we're all infected with this thing. As much as we try to deny it. Maybe we'd been infected with it ever since we stepped off and took our first breath here."

Rachel nodded. "Yes, we are."

"Do you think we're going to die?"

"I don't know."

"Are we going to turn into monsters?"

"I don't know."

It was the honest answer.

Arcady was quiet. "That man in the attic. I don't think I'd want something like that to happen to me. Trapped forever, turned into something you can't even recognize as human but still able to think, your body unable to move and your soul unable to die. It sounds like a horrible fate, doesn't it?"

"Guess so."

"I wouldn't like that to happen to me. You know?"

She wasn't sure where this conversation was really going and she didn't like the predictions for where it was going.

"Yeah, I know." What the hell else could she say?

Another distant moaning scream in the distance. The voice sounded so much like Sam. Arcady didn't show any reaction to it, and honestly by this point neither could Rachel. She wasn't even sure if it was real anymore.

"You know the voice recording I heard? Back in Alpha team's camp?"

"I heard about what happened," Arcady said softly.

"It was my brother's voice," Rachel admitted. "Marcus Yun, that's my elder brother. He was one of the soldiers on Alpha team."

She slowly looked up at Rachel. Her eyes widened in shock.

"Oh my god," she gasped. "Your brother? I… I don't know what to say. God, I can' even imagine what you're feeling, I mean why didn't you tell anyone, why didn't you tell any of us-"

She shook her head, and had to bite back the sudden spike of guilt.

"No. It's not why."

Silence.

"What? What's not why? It makes sense now, why you're here."

She shook her head, forcing the guilt back. "That's now why I cried."

"Then why?"

If there was anything she could say about Marcus it was that he was completely right when he talked about her. There was an endless, insatiable appetite for knowledge and discovery constantly driving her to need to know more even if it would come to the expense of those she cared about.

"He's not the true reason I signed on to this mission," she confessed. "Would I be upset if I found out something terrible had happened to him? Yeah. Of course. Would I cry over him? I don't know. Maybe."

She looked at Rachel with an uncomfortable edge. "Then why did you agree to come on this mission?"

"An excuse. That's what it is. Truth is… all I wanted was to find out what laid behind the curtain. Solving the case of these missing soldiers and finding out what was so special about this island. My brother, 'finding him' was just the last push I needed to convince myself to come aboard."

The priority of finding him was secondary to her true goal of discovery, and acknowledging that was doing nothing but bringing down a massive amount of guilt onto her soul.

She loved her brother, yes. And what would he think of her if he knew she was consciously using the prospect of finding him only as an excuse for her own desires?

"Science? Your own curiosity? Just wanted to understand something new before anyone else did?"

She tried to put the words out in a neutral tone but there was an accusatory edge to it, however unintentional, and Rachel couldn't blame her for that.

Rachel said nothing, couldn't think of anything to say, the right thing to say. Hung her head down in shame.

Where others cared more about their family she cared more about her understanding and it dug into her heart because she knew her drive would never allow her to change it.

The two of them sat there, for a very, very long time, just staring into the ocean waves, before the sudden noise of a commotion coming from the lighthouse stirred them back to attention.

###

Someone had gone crazy. He was in the room where they had offloaded the comms equipment, and she could hear crazed yelling from within it. Peering around she could see him wielding a large fire axe, standing next to machinery with deep, distinct cleaves in it.

"You don't know what we're dealing with here, do you?!" the crazed biochemist screamed with another mighty swing of the axe. Sparks exploded out of the radio equipment.

"I don't think any of you do! Not even our geneticist! A corruptive superorganism! That's what it is!"

"You don't want to hurt anybody, Conrad!" Captain Clarke yelled. Clarke, Brock, Mike and Karen were taking covered against two sides of the wall, and when she tried to peer her head out further she had to duck back from the bullets that fired from the other direction.

"He's lost his mind!" Brock said.

"You think I can't see that?!"

"Don't come any closer! I'll kill you! I'll kill you all if I have to!"

More bullets spat forth, slamming into the wall on the other side.

"Jesus Conrad, think about what you're doing!"

"Don't tell me about thinking about what I'm doing! I know exactly what I'm doing! We can't let this thing out! We can't let it loose on the world! You can't weaponize something you don't understand! We're all walking poison! Any of us get out, and the thing will get out! So nobody gets in and nobody gets out!"

"He's got to run out of ammo soon, right?" Mike asked, to which Brock quickly nodded after a pause.

More gunfire.

"You guys think I'm crazy! Well I'm fine with that! It's not like any of you have the slightest comprehension of what we are dealing with here!"

Another burst of automatic gunfire that abruptly ended with a dry click. Karen moved to run in only to be held back by Mike. "He's got a sidearm too!"

And sure enough more gunfire erupted from the other side. Semi-automatic pistol rounds. "It can't be seen! It can't be felt! And by the time it can be detected it'll already be too late! It will have already rooted itself too deep in, and the only way to cleanse it is to drop fire from the sky!"

More slamming, sparking cleaving noises as he continued to wreck precious equipment.

"Have you tried talking to him?" Rachel asked.

Clarke grimaced. "That's what we've been trying for the past fifteen minutes. But he just won't listen!"

"We can't afford to talk and listen!" Conrad shouted back at the top of his lungs. More crazed ranting. "This thing wants to spread, and grow, and consume! Those are the only three things it will ever do and it will never stop until it has consumed everything! I'm long past talking! You guys can sit around all day with your thumbs up your asses but I'm gonna take action!"

"Rachel, Brock," Clarke commanded. "Take that table. On my mark we charge in with that thing as a shield."

Another burst of gunfire before his handgun clicked dry. "I'll kill you!"

"Alright, go!"

With that they charged.

With a slam he was sent sprawling to the ground, hitting his head on a nearby table. Rachel could see the comms soldier she had never properly spoken to, Simon, crouching nearby with his hands in front of his face. Blood was running from a large wound on his head from where he had apparently been attacked by Conrad.

"It's over, Conrad."

"It's not," he panted. "Don't you see? We can't leave this island, not one of us can."

She could only look over the destroyed equipment with dismay. A small fire was even burning from the damage that had been done.

Even if they had succeeded in subduing the madman the damage had already been done.

###

"What do you mean, we're all infected?" Mike said in a hushed, fearful voice. They were all gathered in one of the larger rooms in the lighthouse, Conrad having been thrown into a small room by himself and locked up.

"I mean," Rachel started, faltering as she realized not even she really wanted to say it out loud, "That we might not make it out of here alive, or as ourselves. Ever since we set foot on this island we've been infected with a kind of infectious fungus. The same one we've seen everywhere. They called it the Bloom, and whether we've noticed them or not it's been causing changes in us. Mutations."

"Bullshit!" Mike yelled standing up and kicking over the chair.

"Calm down, Mike!" Brock asserted. He looked at Rachel with a critical eye. "What kind of mutations are you talking about, Yun? Huh? What's going to happen to us? I've seen my share of nasty creatures with too many eyes, tentacles – is something similar gonna happen to us?"

"I don't know. The changes don't seem to be consistent. From what we've seen so far, with the deer and the group of," she finger-quoted, "'zombies', that giant salamander, and the… bear, the exact mutations the bloom actually induces seem to be unique to each individual."

"How does it work that way? I mean, can a mutagen even be designed to act randomly?" Captain Clarke asked.

"I don't know. The C-Virus is random in its mutations but only to an extent. The G-Virus was truly random, but what we've seen with the bloom doesn't line up with how the G-Virus works, not completely anyway, so it's not the best comparison."

"What's the G-Virus?" Karen numbly asked, not looking at her from where she was sitting on the floor. She rubbed her fingers together nervously.

"It's a virus that induces drastic mutations very, very quickly. I've seen photographic records and they aren't pretty, the subjects aren't recognizable as human anymore mere minutes after infection. It induces rapid, radical mutations to whoever it gets into. With this bloom, the mutations are… subtle." Nervously she slowly ran her hand over the bandaged patch on her arm, aware of what lay beneath it. "Slow-acting. But random all the same. Based on the things we've seen, there's no real consistency to exactly what it changes. It just mindlessly mutates what it touches in any way it can. And it's not just the DNA, it's-"

She stopped, suddenly feeling very unsure of how she was even going to explain this. With everyone looking at her expectantly, she gestured at her head, hoping it would get the point across.

"It's messing with our brains too."

"Drive us insane, you mean?"

She had to pause for several long seconds, to really think about her answer.

"…I don't know," she admitted, truthfully.

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"I don't know if 'driving us insane' is what will happen or if it's even the endgame," she admitted. Palmed her face. "God, there's so little to start from with this fungus. I have no idea how to describe what effects it has because it seems so… random. There are not enough consistent patterns for me to get a start."

Perhaps that was because it was like the G-Virus, truly random in what mutations and alterations it could produce.

Except not even that comparison held water. If anything the best pathogen she could compare to the bloom now was a pure strain of t-Virus. But even then, what she'd seen with the bloom far extended the capabilities of the t-Virus. Could the t-Virus induce strange hallucinations, or cause the thoughts or sensations or memories of others to bleed into each other?

"I don't know," she repeated, sincerely. "I don't know how it works, and I don't know how to explain it."

There was a visible wave of fear and confusion that spread over the entire group.

The only exception was Darren, who stood there against a wall with his utterly blank expression of a face.

By now it was already obvious what had happened to him. She couldn't fathom an explanation as to why or how but based on what she'd experienced herself, his mind had been spliced, shattered, picked up and fused and shattered again a thousand times over and now there was simply not a thing left of who he really was.

Darren was the end result of the bloom's endless mental mutilations, they could see that now.

"So… what are we going to do now?" Karen quietly asked.

A long, long time passed before Captain Clarke took charge with an answer.

"We must discover the source of the bloom."

And Karen's response was immediate, and terrified. "Wait, what? Why! We need to leave, as soon as we can! We've already solved the mystery of what happened to Alpha Team, haven't we? They were lost to the bloom, and so were the VIPs that they were sent here to investigate! Boom, we're done, for real!"

"I know that, Dr. Lansing!" Clarke said through gritted teeth. "But think about it this way. Do you think the bloom is a… natural occurrence?"

"Well obviously not! Someone made it!"

"Exactly. Most likely on this island itself."

"The man in the attic called it the Garden," Rachel murmured. "He said it was a research facility, and it was near the old resort…"

"I can't believe this," Karen said, "Why do you want to go to the lab where all this bullshit began?"

"Because," Rachel said, "It's a probably a high-tech laboratory. You don't get to create something like the bloom without a lot of money and resources."

"So?"

"Our comms equipment is destroyed, Karen. For all intents are purposes we are completely cut off from the outside world. And we can't wait. Waiting for another rescue team will take too long, by the time that happens…"

She trailed off, everyone already having at least a vague idea of the horrible fate that would await them if they simply hunkered down and waited for help.

"And there's nothing we can find in this village to fix it, but if we go to the lab where they made the bloom then-"

"There might be something we can salvage to call for help," Clarke continued, and his tone was final. "Get some rest. Four hours, then we leave for the ski resort."

"No."

Everybody in the room fell silent.

They all slowly turned to face the speaker, who had not talked at all over the course of the meeting.

Darren.

"What do you mean, 'no'?" Clarke said warningly.

Darren shrugged in a way that almost looked casual were it not for how hollowly robotic it looked. "The man who tried to kill you and destroyed your equipment. He got out and now he's got his hands on your explosives. Composition C-4?"

"Wait, what?!"

"You didn't think to tell us!" Karen yelled, suddenly reaching out to grab Darren as she shook him violently. Darren showed no reaction whatsoever but Rachel found her aggressive outburst startling.

"Why should I? He's just standing there."

And indeed, when they turned to look at the doorway Conrad was standing there, his eyes wide and dead-eyed. And right away they realized that Darren wasn't being completely accurate with his words. For instance, he neglected to mention the fact that Conrad had strapped himself full of explosives and clutched in his right hand was a lit flare.

Clutched in his other hand, as if the explosives strapped to his chest weren't enough, was another stack of plastic explosives.

"Anyone tries to shoot me, and I'm blowing us all sky-high."

Everybody's eyes remained trained on him but they found themselves not moving, because in that moment they knew that Conrad really meant it. Under the red light of the flare the biochemist looked surprisingly demonic.

"How did you get out, Conrad?" Clarke demanded to know.

"You left the door open," he replied like it was the most normal thing in the world. "Now, I don't know about you guys, but I don't think any of us are going to make it. So I'm gonna tell you what happens now. You, me, and everybody will get together all the grenades, gunpowder and oil we have. We'll cozy ourselves up one last time, have one last smoke, and then we're letting everything blow in the world's greatest fireworks show."

"Oh, fuck," Rachel swore.

"Like hell we're joining you in your suicide pact!" Mike yelled.

"You want me to blow it up early, Mike!" Conrad yelled back, his lit flare inching uncomfortably closer to the bombs in his right hand.

"I tried, you know," Conrad said. He stepped closer inside the room, everybody slowly inching away from him. "I tried thinking of every option I could but this is the only one I see. The disease has embedded itself, too deeply into us to be seared off. It all has to come burning down."

"Conrad, please, relax. Think about what you're doing," Arcady tried to calm him down, but it wasn't working.

"Wasn't talking to you, shrink," he muttered, apparently confusing Arcady for Karen Lansing. "I know exactly what I'm doing and I wouldn't regret doing it."

Rachel shut her eyes for a moment. What she was about to say could possibly set him off but it was also one way to try getting him to put the goddamn flare down.

"Conrad, think about it," she said. "Say you blow us all up. Okay. What then?"

"What then? This sickness, this disease inside all of us won't be the one finishing this all, is what then."

"But it's still there. The spores are still everywhere on this island, man. In the air, on the trees, everywhere. And they're probably gonna send another mission here to look for us. What do you think's gonna happen then?"

"Well that's their own fucking problem then," he hissed. "I'll be damned if I'm gonna let myself turn out like that thing in the attic-"

A single gunshot suddenly reverberated in the room.

Blood spurted out of the hole in Conrad's forehead as he fell over backwards, flare still lit and explosives undetonated.

Smoke trailed out of Brock's pistol, having drawn and fired with incredible speed. "Thanks, Rachel," he said. "It was the distracted I needed."

Captain Clarke hung his head low, shook it in disappointment.

"Jesus. Are we going trying to kill each other now?"

Rachel sighed.

It certainly wasn't the outcome she was hoping for but honestly she couldn't see any other way out of it. Conrad was too deranged, too dead-set on killing himself before the bloom could take him and he would have taken everyone else in the unit down with him if Brock hadn't acted when he did.

She wondered if he was seeing hallucinations of his own that had prompted all of this, stroked his paranoia. Rachel realized that she simply didn't know Conrad very well, having never tried to talk to him as a person rather than a medic and a biochemist. It wasn't something she regretted, but it mean she lost out on potential context that could have explained his sudden descent into suicidal madness.

In the confusion and exhaustion that filled the group when they had just solved an internal crisis, nobody was prepared for Conrad to suddenly rise back up to his feet, blood and brain matter still running from the bullet hole in his head.

And nobody else was quite prepared as he stumbled back in an apparent daze, walking out of the room, before he put the flare to the bundle in his other hand.

"EVERYBODY GET DOWN-"

The explosion sent Rachel flying out from one of the lighthouse windows into the chasm of the sea below, lethal shards of glass and brick showering above her and missing her by mere inches, before she blacked out.


	10. Tides

**Tides**

Cold, choking.

She was adrift in the sea, except not really, her arms and legs were thrashing as the currents seemed to slam her about. The deep yawning abyss of the bottom seemed to be growing bigger with each passing moment. She was sinking and every time she kicked to push herself upwards the ocean pulled her down. The ocean was nothing but pitch black raw strength that surrounded and swallowed every ounce of her being, and every time her head breached the surface the ocean just as quickly dragged her down.

She tried to kick herself upwards again, to no effect, and in her struggle to fight off the panic she realized that her boots were weighing her down, she had to get them off as fast as she could. When she broke the surface once again she gasped in as much air as she could before inevitably going down again, and this time she curled over so her fingers could touch her feet. It was completely pitch black and she had to fumble, feel with her hands for the knots. Her flesh burned like fire, lungs choking from the water filling them up.

One boot got off.

She thrashed, the ocean not ceasing in its sheer force as it threw and spun. The current flung her face into open air again for the briefest of moments, and she gulped in as much precious oxygen as she could. She fought off the overwhelming panic as she blindly felt around the knots of her other boot, pressure and sheer cold pressing onto everything.

Finally the great weight slid off, and there was an immediate lightness to her being. She breached the surface and was able to stay there, longer this time, and when her legs kicked they could keep her afloat. But the ocean was powerful even with the reprieve from the boots off, and after several seconds it pulled her under again, and though she was able to fight it off and kick her way back topside her energy was fast running out.

Craning her neck around she could see it, the dark outline of land, the distant outlines of pine trees in the night. The island.

She swam closer to it before the force of the waves suddenly send her sweeping towards the island at a speed she panicked from. As light as she was there was little she could do to control herself from being smashed by sheer force. She was powerless, utterly at the mercy of nature, and the thought of that was nothing short of terrifying.

The waves boomed again, throwing her closer to shore.

Her feet scraped something.

Land!

Her relief and joy was interrupted by the sharp pain in her foot and she cried out, tears coming out her eyes and vomit threatening to come out her mouth. Something salty in her mouth – she must have swallowed seawater. Somehow she was aware there was a big gash in her foot from stepping, or scraping on what must have been jagged rock.

She thrashed and kicked with all four limbs again, but again something sharp scraped by her arm this time, leaving a searing pain, and she yelled in panic when she felt herself getting pulled back by the waves, pulled away from salvation. And again she was forced under, cold water overpowering her senses and leaving her in pitch black.

Again and again she kicked and tried to swim but each action only propelled her by less than the one before, she was fast becoming weaker and weaker.

So she was going to drown.

No! She had to swim!

Her attempts were feeble but still she tried, strength diminishing as the cold threatened to swallow her forever.

And yet…

Somebody or something was pulling her across the water and it wasn't the rhythmic back-and-forth of the ocean itself. A constant motion, forcing her through even when the currents were shooting the other way. She could feel strong hands gripping onto her shoulder, pulling her along.

She breached the surface, choked and gasped for air.

The island seemed much closer than it did before.

Somebody was pulling her by the hands, dragging her along the rocks, pulling more and more of her body into the open air. Then her feet were actually touching solid ground, and taking shaking, stumbling steps. Water sloshed in her ears, nausea blurring her mind and she collapsed. A foreign force flipped her over the side, and somebody was pushing onto her chest as she coughed and coughed, freezing cold seawater spurting out of her mouth.

Her vision was blurry, she couldn't see who it was that saved her. They were bent over her, hands furiously pushing at her chest in resuscitation.

"Guys! I found her!"

Huh, a woman's voice. She'd been rescued from drowning by another girl.

In her delirium it came out sounding like Sam's voice.

This felt kind of nice.

Her eyes rolled backward, and she slumped her head onto the hard rough rock. It would be nice to just sleep now, so she could dream…

A searing squeezing pain from her foot caused her to buck as she screamed at the top of her lungs.

"That's right, hurts doesn't it! Don't you die on me now!" the woman yelled into her face, before she resumed pumping into her chest.

And with one final horrible cough and a violent trembling all over her body Rachel was finally awakened from the haze of almost drowning, and she flipped over on all fours, coughing and throwing up vomit and seawater.

With weak arms she pushed herself off and into a seated position, and numbly turned to stare at her rescuer.

Huh, Julie Arcady.

"Hey," Arcady mumbled.

"Hey," she replied back. "Thanks. For –" she motioned over herself.

Arcady pointed somewhere to her left. "Thank them. They saw you first."

A single flashlight beam was waving through the dark as the two figures ran towards them and she recognized them to be Brock Casey and Karen Lansing.

###

She shivered as she squeezed water out from her shirt. "It'd be nice if we can get somewhere nice and warm," she muttered, somewhat half-sardonically.

Nobody knew how long had passed since Conrad decided to blow himself up and separate the unit as a result, but at least the four of them were in this together now. She didn't know what the time was now but it was still dark, the sky lit only with the very, very dark shade of morning blue. It was freezing, the cold only worsened by every breath of the ocean wind, and the strong smell of the sea that spiked every time the waves crashed against the stone beach.

"See any signs of someone else?" Arcady called out to Brock, who was returning to them with his flashlight. Apparently he had avoided being thrown into the water, having survived the explosion injured but dry, and he'd been scanning the shoreline for other survivors for some time now.

"No!" he yelled. "Haven't found anybody else!"

Arcady gritted her teeth, curling her fist up and punching the ground. "Dammit. What else is there for us to do? We could be the last survivors for all we know."

"Continue searching," Karen said from the rock she had been sitting on, where she had been thumbing over a pebble to occupy herself. "We haven't looked through the village, have we? They could be holed up there-"

"No," Rachel cut off. The attention of everybody laid on her. "I don't think we can afford to do that."

She looked down at her hands, trying very hard not to look at the black and yellow that she could see through the translucent bandages. "There's not enough time. We have to keep moving."

The response from Karen was instantaneous, she angrily hurled the pebble into the ground as she raised her voice. "We can't lose track of each other, if we regroup then our chances will-"

"We won't have another chance if we wait any longer!" she raised her voice to an intensity that surprised even herself.

A few moments, the two of them just staring at each other.

"What then?" asked Karen softly.

"What do you mean?"

"Once you've kept moving, reached this 'Garden' – which, by the way, we still don't know actually really even exists – then what?"

"What's the point you're trying to make, Dr Lansing?"

And the response she got was a frantic, desperate snap, "More than half of us are gone, most likely dead! The four of us might be the last survivors out of a team of thirteen! We already know what happened to Alpha team – we've got forensic evidence, video evidence - either they were infected and went crazy or they got killed by monsters that are already on this island, and we already know that this island's contaminated by a fungus that turns people crazy! And do I have to remind everybody that all of us – repeat - all of us, have been infected with this fungus?! What other reason do we need to not leave?!"

"We still don't know how the bloom works, Karen," Rachel said in a controlled tone. "Not completely, anyway. We don't know who made it, and why. Nothing about it is logical if you compare if to other weaponized mutagens on the black market."

"Hell, why do you care so much about comparing it to the stuff Umbrella cooks up?" she spat.

Rachel could say nothing. Karen jabbed an accusatory finger at her chest.

"You trying to deal in bio-weaponry? Wanna know this stuff inside and out so you can sell it to the highest bidder?" she demanded to know. Rachel ignored the questioning suggestion that she was a bioterrorist.

"If we have information," Rachel calmly began, "Then we can speed up the production of a cure. Otherwise we'd be starting from scratch. There'd be records, we'd know exactly what we're dealing with, and with a sample of the bloom in hand –"

"We already have a sample! It's here!" She pointed at her own neck. "Inside us! We get out of here and let them have a look at it then let them cook up a cure!"

"It might be too late by then -"

"It's a start!" she screamed.

And Brock stood up, walked in between them with his arms spread out.

"Ladies, ladies," he reasoned. "I think we all need to calm down a little –"

"You don't get a say in this!" Karen suddenly screamed to his stunned face with surprising rage. "Calm down? Calm down?! You think anybody can fucking 'calm down' when she knows she's being turned into something else by this disease?! I'm not gonna 'calm down'! Not when I can feel every part of myself breaking down each minute longer I spend -"

"Karen!" Rachel snapped. The psychologist glared at her.

"We are stranded on an island, cut off from the rest of the world by about a hundred million gallons of salt water. If you want to pack up and leave, you're more than welcome to try," was her cold response.

Karen yelled inarticulately, mad sounds of blind anger. She was crying, Rachel realized, and she realized Karen wasn't just furious, she was terrified.

Terrified at the prospect of whatever horrible fate awaited them the longer they stayed on the island. Madness, death, mutation.

The psychologist pointed in the rough direction of where the village was. "Look, people were still living in that place as way back as the 70s! There is no goddamn way we can't find a radio, maybe even just parts of a radio we can rig up to talk to someone else."

"It's not a guarantee –" Brock spoke up only to be cut off.

"Even if there isn't a radio then what? It's a coastal fishing village. A fucking _fishing _village! You think someone can go fishing without a boat?! Let's just find a boat, hotwire it or something, and get the hell out of this place!"

She finished, glaring at Rachel with a look that was daring her to come up with an answer that could trump her idea of a logical, rapid escape.

"Karen," Brock slowly said.

She didn't turn to look at him, her seething gaze was directed entirely at Rachel. "What?"

"We don't know how long it might take for help to come when you radio for comms if you rig up a radio here. And just like Rachel said, we wouldn't know how long it'll take for the guys in the lab to cure us if they know next to nothing about the bloom. It could be too late by then."

She didn't answer, just stared at Rachel while panting.

"Hotwire a boat to leave? What if we run into a problem out at sea? Rickety old boat could have irreplaceable parts that blow up, or maybe the fuel would run out. And that's assuming you know how to navigate a boat in open waters. And say a miracle happens and you reach the mainland – you said it yourself, the bloom is inside us. And we don't know anything about it. We don't know how it transmits. Do you really wanna chance spreading it to people who don't deserve it?"

"I don't know what I'm willing to chance anymore," she snarled.

Brock ignored it. Just continued.

"Now, on the other side, it's only gonna take us like, what, half a day of hiking till we can reach the resort? It's closer to where we are compared to the camp site of Alpha team when we were first dropped off. And assuming it's a lab with a budget big enough to study and develop the bloom, it'd have powerful computer and radio equipment too. We could ask for the choppers to come in in an hour. And they'd have all the intact information they need to cook up a cure in the next hour."

"That's right," Rachel interrupted in agreement.

Slowly, Karen turned to look at Brock. She could see the uncertainty on the psychologist's face.

"So," Karen slowly breathed, "You're saying we ought to go deeper into the island, to the lab where all this began… and if we do this, we can escape faster?"

"Yeah," Rachel said.

Karen snapped back to Rachel, the doubt evaporating in an instant to return to the seething fury.

She glared at her with a strange look for several seconds, and Rachel couldn't quite tell what she was thinking, but she didn't like it.

The angered, terrified, accusing look remained on her face as she finally replied, "Okay, fine. You win this time."

"So… we cool?"

"We cool?" she repeated back.

She raised an eyebrow, and the glare didn't leave her face, not once taking its eyes off of Rachel's.

"Yeah. We're cool. We're cool. We're cool. We are totally cool."

The seeping sarcasm laced every word she said like venom but at long last, she finally let go of the glare fixed squarely on Rachel and moved away.

"Thanks for nothing," Karen snapped to Arcady as she walked past her. Rachel realized that Arcady hadn't contributed to the explosive argument at all, opting to simply stand there by the side with nothing to say.

Arcady turned to them, raised her arms in frustration. "What did I do?" she asked, before turning to join Karen in walking in the direction they had to go in.

"I wasn't expecting her to blow up like that," Brock commented to her privately, speaking close to her ear so nobody else would hear it. "When did she become so… volatile?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

Rachel had no answer.

She could have just agreed with Karen. Maybe even just help her alone escape the island, given that it was what she wanted above everything else. Hotwiring a boat honestly wasn't that bad of an idea.

The problem was that all Rachel herself wanted was to know more about the bloom. To understand it, inside and out. Having others to help her along the way would simply make reaching the goal easier to accomplish.

She looked down at her feet as she walked, not sure what it was she was feeling.

Shame? Guilt?

The more she thought about it the more she was sure it was guilt. She was a selfish woman who only cared about what she wanted and she was willing to drag others through hell with her if it meant her accomplishing what she wanted.

But she didn't have the will to act back on it. What was done was done, with Brock helping her along.

The weight of her decision tore her up on the inside and she didn't know what to feel or do about it, but she did wonder if she should have done something else instead.


	11. The Cabin

**The Cabin**

They were cold, they were wet, and they were hungry, and all they had to guide themselves through the night was a single flashlight. Suffice to say, nobody in the small group was in a good much, not helped by the strange sounds that they heard in the distance. About an hour after the explosive agitation she had shown Karen had seemingly once again become withdrawn, looking down at her feet with a fearful expression as she walked and having her hands holding each other. When she heard the distant noises she would look up immediately, her breaths growing shallow and rapid as she would debate whether to react with violence or flee.

Every now and then Rachel couldn't help but perk up at the sounds too, for there was nothing that could get her used to the haunting sound of the distant, woman-like howl that sounded so human but was so wrong in the intonation, the little details, that made it one of the eeriest things she'd heard in her life.

She didn't why it got to her, as deep as it did. For all intents and purposes she'd seen far worse.

Both in Afghanistan, and during excursions sent by the university to warzones where outbreaks of viruses had happened.

But even then none of the things she'd seen there had really gotten to her, had they? Not even what she'd seen – what she'd done – with children had done much to get under her skin.

But this distant moaning and screaming in the forest – now this was getting under her skin.

She wondered if, at the end of all this, if she survived and managed to make it back home in one piece, she should ever tell her sister about the things she'd seen and done. It was odd, she never felt the need to do so, never thought it necessary or comforting to tell stories to her family, not even her brother, yet now here she was considering it. Why?

Honestly she couldn't figure out why.

But she could tell how Maggie would react if she ever asked her to sit down in the living room with her, and tell her some of her experiences, and be honest with them.

Maggie would never see her in the same way again, that was for sure.

She might reconsider branding her image of a 'badass aunt' for her niece or nephew.

Why was she even thinking about how she was perceived by her family? She'd never thought about that thing before, never cared what her family thought of her, never saw much of a point in just talking with them beyond the utilitarian. She'd gotten her degree, returned from military service and pretty much immediately moved to Seattle after the university accepted her application as a researcher. She'd see her family maybe thrice a year, call Maggie and Mom and Dad maybe once a month or once even two months, and they were never occasions she'd looked forward to. Then there'd been Dad's funeral, and Mom's after that, and that was the last time she'd been together with Marcus and Maggie in a single room, eating a meal that consisted of the last batch of kimchi Mom had made before she passed.

The guilt over failing to just talk to her sister more, get to know more about her brother-in-law beyond just getting the name, feel more excitement about the birth of Maggie's child, the total detachment she felt towards that fetus growing in Maggie's womb, it was an utterly foreign feeling that she'd never experienced before. Why the hell was she feeling the need to connect to her sister more?

It frightened her to the core.

"What do you suppose the time's supposed to be now?" Arcady asked.

A pause before Brock replied, "5, 6 in the morning?"

The complete dark of the conditions they were in answered the strangeness of the fact it was technically sunrise yet it still felt like the middle of the night.

Yet another strange thing that they had no answer for.

There was so little she could explain about the bloom, and whether it was screwing with their sense of the weather or if it really was still the middle of the night and now dawn, she had no idea. She wasn't even sure if she could trust herself, by this point.

After what seemed like forever of hiking through darkness with nothing but a single beam of light to guide them, they finally came across a place to rest and recover from the horrors they had gone through, if only for an hour or so.

Not too far from them, lit under the faint blueish light of the moon was what seemed like the silhouette of a cabin. Shelter was good, always appreciated.

The building appeared to be become bigger as they approached it, or it could simply be that they couldn't see what it was clearly when first glimpsing it from a distance. It looked like any other typical vacationer's cabin, but damaged through years of deterioration and vegetative overgrowth. A rusted children's swing and flamingoes sat in the lawn, a reminder of an age long past. A sign, the painted words 'For Rent' on it faded but still visible, swayed in the wind, hanging on a single chain.

"Who'd build a place like this? Out here?" Karen asked in disbelief.

"I don't know, but it looks secure," Brock said.

The inside was filthy, dusty, reeked strongly of fish and animal. Pumpkins were strung up in strings, blackened from years of rot.

Rachel wrinkled her nose as she came in. "Smells like something died in here," she remarked, and with how things were on the island she wouldn't be surprised if that literally turned out to be the case.

The interior of the cabin was typical, brick and plank that was overgrown by mats of dark green moss, and as with everything else it had decayed into nothing but a ruin. Dust and debris dribbled from unpatched holes in the ceiling, a mounted deer's head having collapsed with its neck twisting at a grotesque angle, but they could see recognize a living room, a kitchen, and off to the side were a flight of stairs leading somewhere up.

It was clear just from looking around that this was probably not just another tourist's cabin back in the years past, the commemorative black-and-white photographs of men in sailing uniforms and WW2-era battleships, the bleached shark jaws and mounted dead-eyed fish on the walls told a different story. Whoever once owned this cabin didn't build it with honeymooning couples in mind, this was once somebody's actual home.

Karen seemed particularly drawn to the firearm that was mounted on the wall. Walking slowly towards it in an almost reverent fashion, she took the firearm off its stand, inspected it. Rachel recognized it, herself. A Winchester 1912, trench model, a classic shotgun that was popular among Marines during the Pacific theater of World War II, and was known for its ability to rapidly expend its shells in a deadly burst by holding down the pump while pulling the trigger.

There was a strange, excited look to Karen as she admired the shotgun in her hands. She had never taken Karen for a gun expert let alone a gun enthusiast, found it curious how she seemed to know what to check and how to check it by heart when she seemed barely competent with her assault rifle days before, only supplied with one because they wanted everyone to be armed. Then again, if she had to resort to stereotypes, she was a Texan.

"I like this one," she declared. It was followed by a silent awkwardness when she realized, apparently without having realized it before, that the shotgun was empty and not loaded with any shells that would make it a viable weapon.

Then her attention appeared to be drawn somewhere else, and she bent down in front of the fireplace, frowning.

"Guys?" Karen asked. "Who lit that fireplace?"

"What do you mean?" Rachel came in and leaned closer to inspect it.

There were still glowing embers in the remains of the fireplace. Someone had started a fire here, left it to burn out, and it had happened very recently. In fact, now that she was aware of it she realized even the faint smell of smoke still wafted in the air, otherwise obscured by the stench of rust and decaying wood.

She peered down, focusing her eyes on the floor. It was absolutely caked in dust and the occasional dead insect, but faintly scattered across the wooden planks were what looked almost like… prints? Pawprints. They looked like a dog's, somewhat, and her only thought was that whoever was just here in this cabin owned a dog with him. She couldn't tell for sure though, not when there was so much other ash and debris that ruined how well the pawprints looked.

How would that be possible though? Could there really be somebody else on this island hunting and surviving with a dog for a companion?

Not to mention, while she couldn't see the finer details the size of the pawprints seemed abnormally large for a dog…

"Maybe someone else's out there," Brock said, echoing her thoughts. "Regardless, we should search through the cabin. Make sure there's nothing that can bite us."

An exploration of the second floor revealed a corridor with three rooms, bedrooms by the looks of it. One room appeared to have been a children's room, with toys still scattered over the floor. The other led to a bathroom, the tub of which was filled with a foul-smelling dark water that stained the edges of the ceramic brown.

The last door could only be the master bedroom, but when she tried to open it she found that the knob refused to budge.

"What's wrong?" Brock asked.

"It's locked."

"Maybe there's a key somewhere or what-" Karen offered.

Arcady pushed her out of the way before kicking at the door. It didn't budge. She kicked it again, and again. Rachel was ready to pull out her gun and shoot the lock open when on her fourth great kick Arcady's foot went through the wood of the door, weakening the frame enough for it to swing open on her next consecutive kick.

"God," she said softly as she peered into what was inside the door, her eyes narrowing.

A dry, salty smell like that of preserved meat wafted in and when Rachel looked inside she could see what Arcady was disgusted about. A corpse hung from a noose above the lovers' bed, swaying gently. It had clearly been there for quite a while, for the skin was dried and emaciated, turned black and stretching tight against the bones. The head, having rotted enough for the skin on the face to peel back and expose the skull, was hanging its jaw open in a silent scream. But the fact that most of his skin still seemed preserved, the intact nature of his skeleton, it all implied that the airtightness of the room he hung himself in had unconventionally mummified his corpse.

As disgusting as the find was however Rachel didn't find herself unsettled by it very much. A corpse that had hung itself in a bedroom, morbid though it was, was something normal.

Something else she noticed was the fact that she couldn't see any obvious signs of mutation on this corpse. No fungus growing, no obvious growths of the bloom, no abnormal bone structure or teeth, for all intents and purposes the corpse appeared to have been that of an ordinary man who saw fit to hang himself dead.

Brock swung his machete at the rope that was still hauling the body up, and the corpse collapsed to the bed in a crumpled heap of skin and bone and clothes. "Poor bastard," he muttered, shaking his head.

Rachel walked closer, touched and pulled up the body to get a better look to the moans of disgust by Karen. The clothes were long dried and mummified with the rest of the body but they were still recognizably olive-green military. There were blotches of dull red on the noose that tightened around the man's neck – dried blood, an uncomfortable clue that in his last death throes the soldier might have reconsidered his decision and tried to free himself from the rope to no avail.

"Another one of Alpha team."

"Any clue who he was?" Brock asked.

Still hanging on the noose were a set of dog tags, and she took them off to inspect them closer.

She raised a confused eyebrow. "Huh."

"What is it?" Arcady asked.

"This dog tag," she said. "It's been scratched off."

There was nothing she could see of the name, or blood type, no place of birth or unit number. All the relevant information on the small piece of metal had been scratched off by what could only be the work of a small blade.

It wasn't something she had come across before.

"What? Why?" Brock asked. Exactly what she was thinking.

"I got no clue. You?"

He shook his head. "Do you think he did it himself?"

"Why would someone scratch off their own dog tag? Doesn't make any sense," she said.

There were other irregularities that didn't quite line up. The presence of the hanged man didn't make sense when she put it together though. If there was somebody else already living in the cabin long enough to start a fire before them, then why would they not realize the presence of a decaying mummy upstairs?

It was a strange situation, but it wasn't urgent, not when what they needed now was a safe place to call a shelter for the night. "Anyway, let's make sure we secure this place, board the windows up," Brock ordered. "We rest here two hours and we move out again."


	12. The Parasite

**The Parasite**

The kitchen was brightly lit, brilliant sunlight pouring in from the window. There were two figures over the counter, a tall woman of mature beauty and a small girl who needed to stand on a stool to see what her mother was doing.

"So," Mom started, "Remember what I said? The cabbage has to be soaked for how long?"

"Overnight," the girl declared with a smile. Mom smiled. "That's very vague, but it doesn't have to be specific, if it works, then it works. Right?"

The girl pointed somewhere in the hall and giggled. "Rachel!"

"Rachel?" Mom said. She saw the short girl, the middle sibling peering out from the corner, who gasped when she realized she'd been caught staring.

Her cheeks blushed with embarrassment as she debated whether to retreat into her bedroom or not.

"Hey there, Sun-hee!" Mom called out cheerfully, in Korean. "What are you doing watching us from the corner all sneaky-like, huh? Come on, lemme show you how to make our very own family kimchi."

She stood there, staring and unsure whether to make eye contact with her mother.

"You don't have to be shy with your own family," she reassured.

"Come and see what we're doing here, big sis!" Maggie called out too.

But she was paralyzed, couldn't help but feel incredibly unsettled by how cheery they were and how they were telling her to come do something she didn't like, and when that settled into her head her response was to retreat into the safe bubble of her bedroom, where she would log on her computer and end up spending the rest of the afternoon browsing the fascinating adventures of Darwin and his little finches. Then she spent the hour after that reading a science-fiction novel about dinosaurs where she found the science more engrossing than the dinosaurs themselves, and she kept reading and reading until she was called for dinnertime. Then she'd end up getting into a fight with Marcus again because he teased her about something she didn't like and it made her throw her food at him with her scrawny little hands.

It wasn't until she was in middle school that her parents took her to see a doctor that she never quite understood the significance of until adulthood, then her parents finally started taking her to do things she actually enjoyed that they assumed the kids would find boring.

But even then she would find herself turning bored very fast, feeling no desire to ever revisit information she already knew, and never during those years did she really ever force herself to sit down and just learn to make kimchi with her family.

###

Brock was behind her, putting a drape over the body of the hanged man and quietly murmuring what was probably some words of respect to the fallen soldier. She could tell it wasn't his first time doing this, and it wasn't something she was good at. Even when people around her died when she was in the MP, she never was able to figure out what to say. That was something other people were better at, and she'd just shrug and move on.

She wondered sometimes, if she was wrong for not being able to feel in that way.

Brock looked over his shoulder, saw her standing there. "Rachel," he acknowledged.

"Casey," she said in turn.

"You still unarmed?"

Somehow it slipped her mind, that she had lost both her assault rifle and her sidearm when she went in the water. The only means of self-defense she had on her person was the survival knife and a flash grenade, miraculously undamaged from the explosion and the water.

Before she could reply Brock held up a stopping hand. Then, he reached into his back belt and pulled out a sidearm out of a concealed holster she had not seen in the equipment room when they were gearing up for the mission.

Brock flipped the gun around, offered it to her. "Have it. It's German, 9-millimeter."

She took it after a moment, inspected the weapon, tested the weight and heft. A compact pistol with a fancy chrome finish and a tactical rail, called the P226. Quite a bit of custom tuning had clearly gone into it, certainly more than the Berettas she was used to. "You made your own modifications to this?"

"No, I had a friend do it for me," he said with a smile.

"Thanks," she said. "You always have a concealed backup weapon?"

He shrugged. "Doesn't hurt to be prepared, does it? Especially on a place like this."

She couldn't think of anything to reply to that, not when it was really just agreement when it came down to it.

"Rachel," he called out.

"What is it?"

"Have you considered doing something you know, deep down, that you're wrong for - but doing it anyway because you know you can escape the consequences?"

The kid she shot in Afghanistan came to mind, the scared-looking little boy with a grenade in his hands.

She'd justified it to herself, he had ambushed them with lethal intent in mind and because of that shooting him was the right thing to do. Even if it was all for nothing in the end because the kid succeeded in pulling the pin and ensuring her comrade Eric would never be seeing his cheerleader sister ever again.

Then again, if she was in the right why didn't she tell it to anybody else, put it down in her patrol report?

She weighed her next words carefully. "Well, I wouldn't say I had to 'consider' it. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision and I did what I knew I had to do."

Brock sighed deeply, and it sounded like one of relief. "I'm glad to hear that. Really."

"Why is it?"

"Because it means I'm not the only one who has to make decisions like that. Tells me that I'm not alone in this. It's a comforting thought."

She stared at him, unsure if this was how the bloom was affecting Brock's psyche, before deciding to leave. If telling him that made him comfortable then it would make the progression of the mission go smoother, would it not?

By her count it had been about half an hour since they arrived in the cabin and it still didn't look like there were any signs of daylight coming. The windows had been boarded up as best as they could and they had managed to find two old floodlights in the cabin garage that, surprisingly enough, were still functional. One of them they used to illuminate the living room so to give a poor impression of a campfire, while the other they placed out in the lawn. Brock reasoned that it could serve as both a signal to the other members of the unit, provided they had survived, as well as a deterrent to possible attackers – pointing out that on the night of the attack by the horde of mutated men the camp had been in utter darkness, that it was possible strong light might be able to deter them from attack, as he had seen before in some other viral outbreaks that he didn't specify.

It wouldn't guarantee safety, not by any means.

But it could buy them time, and that was the important thing.

She could see someone sitting out next to the floodlight. Stepping out to the porch, she saw Arcady, sitting down with her hands clutched tight. She was staring, looking out into the darkness of the woods.

"I'm scared, Rachel," she said, suddenly.

"You scared of what's out there in the woods?" She replied. It wasn't an irrational fear. Not in this place.

Arcady shook her head. No.

"I'm scared of losing myself."

She thought of the pack of infected, crazed men that attacked them at Alpha team's campsite. Strange that they were the only instances of zombie-like monsters they had encountered thus far, despite the evidence that there should be far more like them…

"Becoming something else, huh?"

And Arcady immediately shook her head again.

"I'm not scared of becoming _something_ else, Rachel. I'm scared of becoming _someone _else."

All she could do was look back at her with a gaze that was full of worry. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew what Arcady was talking about.

But she didn't know if she was ready to acknowledge it yet.

After all, it was something she was terrified to discuss, far more terrified than she was discussing genetic mutations and the transformation of men into monsters.

Arcady narrowed her eyes at something out in the dark. She could see her fingers thumbing along the trigger of her weapon.

"Dr. Arcady? What is it?"

Her look was grim, like she was facing an oncoming enemy. "I can hear them calling for me," she said.

"What?"

She strained her ears. Heard nothing.

"What are you talking about, Arcady? Julie?"

No answer. But Rachel could guess, and she knew the answer she guessed was right.

Still glaring out at whatever it was that was disturbing her, Arcady reached down and pulled up her assault rifle. She cocked it, ready to fire.

"I'll just be going out for some fresh air, might be a while. Don't follow me."

She stood up and began walking into the forest.

And this sudden action, Rachel found startling. She bolted up in shock at the geologist's decision.

"Julie! What the hell are you talking about? Those voices, whoever it is you're hearing – they're just hallucinations! Don't do this!"

But Julie didn't look back, didn't acknowledge her at all as she strode forth into the darkness with nothing but an assault rifle and the clothes on her back. As Rachel rushed over to bodily pull Julie back from what was more than likely suicide the taller woman growled and easily shoved her away with a strength that shouldn't have come as surprising.

And when Rachel persisted, Julie suddenly kicked her in the stomach, sending her backwards to the ground with a grunt of pain.

And she froze when she realized Julie was now pointing an assault rifle in her direction. She flicked the safety off, and Rachel realized the geologist was seriously considering the possibility of killing her.

"Don't," Julie hissed, "Try to stop me. I have to be there. I have to see them with my own two eyes. And if you try to stop me – if anyone tries to stop me – I'll shoot you dead myself."

###

She couldn't remember what she did exactly afterwards, but there was an overwhelming, crushing feeling of despair. She rocked back and forth in the corner of a room, holding her head and muttering for a reason she couldn't even fathom herself.

Why was she feeling like shit for the likely death of someone who was ready to kill her? Since when had she ever felt sorrow like this?

She didn't feel it with Marcus and what happened with Sam was one thing, but now…

She didn't know why.

She didn't know why she just cried herself out like that.

Nobody checked in on her, she pulled at her hair and pulled at her nails, ripping off another two of them to expose the diseased mycelia-encrusted flesh beneath them.

###

Brock and Karen both seemed to be at rest. She would tell them later, once daylight started and they would have to get moving again, now without Lansing.

Her own head felt painful and fuzzy. She was jumping at mundane little sounds the cabin made, pulling out her gun at shadows and tricks of the light. More and more she just told herself that if it wasn't survival delirium, it was the bloom doing its work on her mind, and all that did was tell her she didn't have very long left.

Assuming the bloom was manmade, which it more than likely was, how was it actually supposed to function from a practical standpoint? Most mutagenic pathogens in the modern day were designed, if not to kill their hosts rapidly and spread the contagion to repeat the process as with certain strains of the t-Virus, then it was to create B.O.W.s. She hadn't seen signs of that, the mutated men hadn't looked like they were functional B.O.W.s at all and what she'd seen of the coffin soldier and the man in the attic were mutations that were far from beneficial if one wanted to produce a bio-weapon for combat purposes. How was a man stuck in one place with his guts outside of him supposed to fight and kill enemy soldiers?

Unless, of course, this was not how the bloom was designed in the first place.

That it was made for another purpose entirely.

She settled it there and then, she had to make it to the Garden.

Not to use radio equipment to call for help, as was suggested to calm Karen down.

No, the Garden was the laboratory where it all began. The people who created the fungus would have left documents, records, maybe even computer data of experimentation. She needed to know more.

Maybe if she understood the bloom inside and out, then whatever had happened with Marcus would not be in vain.

These things she noted and took down in her little journal. It had been disturbing how often she seemed to forget she had the book in her possession, let alone why she began keeping a record of events for herself in the first place.

Trying to find a good place to rest was difficult, especially when she was feeling more anxious with each passing minute, aware that the fungus was working its way through her brain now.

She could even still hear the moaning screams in the distance, screams that she told herself were just products of the bloom now.

_Rachel!_

_Help me!_

_Someone, help me…._

It sounded so much like Sam but no, it wasn't, that was what she told herself but even with that self-reassurance she couldn't get herself any comfort.

Then she noticed something that hadn't been there at first. A hatch in the ceiling that was open, trails of dust and spores trailing down from it.

Who opened it?

She got up the ladder and peered inside.

The attic was small, the air damp and musky, and here she could see the blooms of mud orange fungus on the walls.

A single flashlight sat unattended on the floor, Brock's flashlight.

What was going on? She hauled herself fully up into the room, picked up the flashlight to shine it around. Aside from the fungal growths on the walls the attic appeared unremarkable at a glance, nothing but old crates scattered here and there that couldn't possibly contain anything exciting.

Then her eyes were drawn to something on the wall. A series of markings, carved by a knife into the wood. Lines, tally marks. 4/5, 4/5, 4/5. It went on and on, the tally marks covering an entire section of the wall. Weeks, months, possibly even a year had gone by with this person marking each passing day.

Someone had holed themselves up here for a long, long time, counting the days that passed.

Her thoughts went to the hanging body in the master bedroom. Could it be..?

She searched around with more attentive eyes this time, looking for clues.

Bloodstains on the floor, dried but still visible. There wasn't a lot, only a few drops, but that could mean anything from a simple accident to a physical scuffle between two parties.

Handprints, human handprints, marring the dust on the floor and on the walls. One of them was stained with old blood.

A few shell casings, small caliber rounds, possibly from a semi-automatic pistol.

What had gone on in this attic?

Then her attention was drawn to the pile that had been next to where the flashlight had been originally dropped.

Books, stacked up in an uneven pile as though someone was reading them recently. There was an ancient note on top of the stack, crumpled and yellowed with age. The words on the paper were still visible even with the smudged ink and what looked like another drop of blood, and she read -

_I thought I was ready to lead these men to their deaths. They sure thought so._

_But no. It's been 187 days since Shaun died. I'm the last one. And I caused all of this, because they told me to do so. And when I'm gone, they'll just send another group that doesn't know what's awaiting them. And they're gonna be another me. Just like in every group. _

_Each day I see something different in the mirror, someone else I can't recognize. I cannot remember what my name is. My mind is in shambles. I remember things that contradict. I remembered I had a wife. Then I remembered I had a husband. I even thought I was a woman. Sometimes my skin changes its color before my eyes. I can't tell what's mine and what's not anymore. Some days I feel like a dozen people, splitting and bickering and twisting my mind. All I know is that I did this. I'm responsible. _

_I can't bear this pain._

_Someone had to bear the weight of knowing the mission's true purpose and guiding everyone to it but I can't bear it. _

_I can't. _

_On the plus side, found some oil. Maybe can burn it with wood to make a good fire. _

_Maybe I'll just torch myself on my own pyre like that monk in Vietnam. Would be a hell of a way to go. _

_2014._

0o0

2014.

2014.

…four years ago?

But what the brass told her was that the initial disappearance of the VIPs had happened relatively recently, same with the dispatch of Alpha Team and…

Fighting off an increasingly worsening feeling in her stomach she started reading through the stack of books that sat under the suicide note.

They were all old, frayed, moth-eaten, and they were all journals. Each one with a different handwriting, a different author, and there were easily a dozen of them.

She was struggling to contain to contain the tears as they poured out, the betrayal sinking into her chest with each and every page of the journals she went through.

Investigate the disappearance of locals on the island, said one.

Rescue the head of the National Security Agency, said another.

Investigate the sightings of Hunters and other possible bioweapons on this island, said the next one.

Track down and capture or kill a dangerous wanted terrorist, said one more.

Some they approached quietly, launched from stealth submarines.

Others jumping from planes.

One was a full-blown military expedition complete with tanks and Humvees being dropped off via multiple dropships.

The dates spoke of a mission that had been repeating, and failing each time, and years and years, possibly as far back as six years ago.

All of them with a different excuse, different methods of excursion, dispatched with different units of the military, but now she could see all the missions had the same goal.

There were common words she found, in every journal. Some were sent with explicit instructions about their objective. Most of them only found out about it from discovering what was left behind by those who came before. One had apparently shot one of their comrades when they discovered they knew what the true purpose of the mission was all along.

'Bloom'.

'Garden'.

'Heart of the Bloom.'

'Diamond Blossom'.

All of these missions were designed to eventually lead them to find and secure whatever it was that the Diamond Blossom was. Most likely the codename for a secret bioweapons project that created the bloom. Perhaps it was even the name for the bloom itself. One that clearly failed, and would now slaughter and doom each and every single loyal man and woman sent by their government to this island.

Lies, all of it. They were all lied to and played for fools. She really shouldn't have been surprised. The top-level guys always did lie, manipulate and experiment in the name of maintaining American superiority. Wasn't that how Raccoon City happened in the first place? Only soldiers were far more disposable than a city of civilians. Nobody would notice if someone told a family the grim news that their son or daughter in service wasn't coming back home.

She cried, slammed her fist onto the ground.

"There is an explanation for this, you know. If you're just willing to hear me out."

She screamed at the unexpected voice, spinning around to see Brock standing right next to her with a strange look on his face. She grabbed him by the chest and slammed him against the wall. "You… you knew, didn't you? All along, what we were walking into?"

Now it made sense, why he had wanted to talk to her about escaping consequences. He knew that on a moral level what he was doing was fundamentally wrong, and the guilt of it had been gnawing away at him all this time.

No confirmation, he just stared at her. "If you'll just let me-"

"I don't want to hear your goddamn explanation!" she yelled, and looking at the look of panic and terror on Brock's face she felt it for a moment, felt a very real urge to simply pull out the gun he gave her and simply shoot him square in the face. "I… I don't… I don't want…"

Her growls mixed into sobs and she let him go, his form slumping on the ground looking up at her huffing and panting. Sweat poured down his face in buckets.

She didn't want to deal with this, not now. So she left him where he was, left down the attic.

There was a blue tint to the moonlight pouring in, the night was finally coming to an end. She walked down the corridor, searching the rooms. "Karen? Where are you, Karen?"

No reply.

"Karen?"

Downstairs she went.

Nothing seemed to have changed about the living room. "Karen? Where you at?" She raised her voice, a little bit of panic unwittingly creeping into her tone. Her heart was pounding, faster and faster.

And her eyes became drawn to the figure lying on the floor at the end of the living room. "Karen!"

She was slumped over, the blood pouring out what looked like a blunt-injury wound on her head making it clear what had happened to her. The psychologist's hands and feet were bound with rope, leaving her a curled mess. Bloody handprints – fresh bloody handprints – marred the wall next to her, painting the image of an initial assault that she tried to fend off to no avail.

She seemed to be unconscious, eyes shut. They slowly opened as she moaned weakly – and when she realized she couldn't move Karen moaned, started to thrash and struggle. When Rachel rolled her over she realized her mouth had been taped over, and she immediately ripped it off.

"Rachel?" she gasped. "What… what happened?" She glanced down at herself, her eyes sagging and demeanor weak. "Brock happened," she replied in a hurry, suddenly regretting having not killed the soldier in the attic right there and then revealing he had a secret objective to what was, in hindsight, a pointless suicide mission that they had been sending god-knows how many other teams to.

She simply couldn't have imagined that it would turn out he had turned mad, having attacked Karen and possibly planning to attack her. Was he always poised right there on the edge of madness? Or was this an effect of the bloom?

"I can't remember," Karen was sobbing. "Rachel, what's happening to me? I… I did something really bad. I didn't have a gun, I swear. But I knew I did it and I swear it wasn't me, it wasn't me –"

"You can tell me more later," she said as she worked at cutting the rope holding Karen shut. Karen's tears were streaming freely, whatever she had hallucinated while being knocked out had obviously really gotten to her but this simply wasn't the time to discuss it, not when there was a madman loose in the cabin.

Then she heard footsteps rapidly coming in, closing the distance, and immediately her hands flew to the P226 and she spun it around to fire it at Brock only to have her arm grabbed. She was a strong, athletic woman, but Brock was bigger, stronger, and she gasped in aim as he forced his arm upward. The gun fired, and the noise of it was deafening in the enclosed space of the cabin. It was enough to stun her senses for just a moment, and in that moment a fist slammed itself into her face, knocking her against the wall.

And Brock made a move to grab her again, and she ducked the attempt by mere inches, falling onto her knees and gasping in fear as she crawled away as quickly as she could, painfully aware that Brock was in pursuit mere footsteps away.

"Rachel!" Karen screamed.

A powerful hand grabbed her by the back of the neck and threw her bodily into one of the rooms to the side. She yelled as her back slammed into a cabinet, splintering the ancient wood into pieces. She could feel splinters and wood chips stabbing into her flesh. Then she realized Brock was standing over her and he was holding an assault rifle in his hands, one that he was flipping over the side so its stock was pointed at her.

"It never had to come to this, you know."

Brock sounded so self-assured even though his voice was cracking, she could see the beads of sweat coming down his head.

And he swung the stock down, shattering it upon her jaw, and the world spun out of control, her eyes going fuzzy from the force of getting struck in the face by a hard bludgeon of polymer and metal.

She was powerless as he dragged her, threw her to another side of the room. Her gun, where was her gun?

Lost in the struggle before.

What did she have now?

A flash grenade, a knife…

"I never asked to be a part of this. I was looking forward to seeing home again when they called me up for this gig. You can't fucking judge me for that!" he ranted like a lunatic.

He was watching her, that she was sure of. And with the position she was in now directly getting up and coming at him with just a knife was suicide. Same with the flash grenade, he would see it coming from a mile away.

She couldn't distract him right now, so maybe she should wait for him to get closer. Then she'd be able to strike with the knife and it wouldn't be as easy for him to react quickly -

"Don't be delusional. I'm just a patriot doing what his country asks of him. And the country asked that nobody else can know about the mission's true objective. I'm just following up on that. Surely you of all people can understand."

Brock was talking to himself, replying to something she hadn't said at all. So he was hallucinating, having a conversation with an imaginary version of Rachel herself. It wasn't surprising. As a matter of fact, she found it good on one side. A hallucinatory conversation would distract and delay him, buy her time to think of something. But it also meant he was unpredictable. For all she knew the hallucination Brock was talking to might well say something that pissed him off and he would just shoot her, and that would be the end of it.

He chuckled slowly, creepily, shakily. He sounded frightened, but excited at the same time, and the effect was freaky.

"I've read your dossier, Yun. Including the, ah, psychological profile. They perform psychiatric checks on everyone that they handpick for one of these cyclic jobs, you know? And your check does paint a very interesting picture of you. Tell me… do you think you're a sociopath? Because if you are, and I'm pretty goddamn sure that you are a sociopath, then it'd make all of this a whole lot easier."

"You wanna know why? Because it means I'm better than you. Unlike you, I can feel like any other man or woman. I know what I wanna do – what I'm about to do – is wrong. And knowing I'm wrong is what makes me right. Because you don't acknowledge when you're wrong for shit."

He was still talking and talking and she was just ignoring every bit of it but what she needed was for him to actually do something, come closer…

"I mean, look at Karen out there. What a pathetic girl. They really shouldn't have picked her for this, nobody like Karen deserves to go mad and die in a ditch in a place like this. I tried persuading them, as best as I could, that she just wasn't right for this mission, but they wouldn't listen. So I couldn't pull through with her, not when I felt… pity. Ha-haha-ha. I'd feel very bad about it if something really terrible were to happen to her, you know? That's why I, I decided not to go ahead, with her. But you… with you, I wouldn't feel bad."

And hearing the words of what he was ranting about it was then, that she realized what Brock intended to do.

"I know it's wrong no matter what, but hey, morality's relative, aint' it? Karen just wants to leave but you lie to her so you can get your way. I was lying because it was my mission, but you? Well, I don't know. So I guess it ain't wrong if it's a sociopath's the one getting hurt. Nobody'd shed any tears for someone who only cares about themselves, through and through. Why would they? She wouldn't be shedding tears for them or their mother."

Silence. Nothing but huffing and panting.

Brock was hesitating.

"But I've been thinking… what if maybe, just maybe, this really is my last dance?" He shook his head, chuckled nervously. "It's something I've considered all my life, but I'd never thought I'd face it for real."

He turned around, stepping away from her. She could tell that even at this point he was seriously debating it with himself and the imaginary version of herself he was really talking to – whether to kill her or not, on the basis that Rachel being what he claimed to be a sociopath justified it.

…was she, though?

Nobody had ever told it to her face before, but…

Wait, his back was turned and he was still mumbling and raving to himself. Every few moments a violent shudder went over his entire body, and she wondered if that had something to do with whatever physical mutations the bloom were inducing in him. With all the strength she could muster she pushed herself up to her feet, grabbed the hilt of the survival knife, readying herself to stab.

"I know I'm going to die on this island. Maybe in an hour, maybe tomorrow, but it's coming. Not a lot of soldiers get the privilege of knowing when they're gonna die. Some guys would wanna go out taking their enemies with them. But me? Ah hell, no. I think I'd wanna end it with one last bang. You agree, right? Seeing as we're both going to die anyway. Might as well party like it's the end of the world."

Once more he twitched violently, and began to cough and sputter before vomiting a torrent of blood and mud-orange fungal fluid that splatted on the floor in a disgusting pool. He was mutating rapidly, the transformation being internal by the looks of it. Some part of her mind, buried by more urgent priorities, wondered for a moment what she would see if she cut him open right now to peer at what laid inside.

His mutating body was the perfect distraction she needed and she swung the knife.

And he spun around and raised his palm, the blade sinking right through the center.

Brock showed absolutely no reaction to the knife sticking through his hand, nor the blood that began to dribble from the wound. She gritted her teeth and screamed, struggling to pull the knife out his hand so she could stab again.

"You have to try harder than that," he muttered, eyes a blank stare.

And grabbing her by both her wrists he threw her back to the end of the living room outside.

Karen jolted when Rachel landed in a heap next to her, coughing and sputtering. She only spared a glance, but it looked as though the psychological was miserable, slumping in a corner and looking paralyzed with fear. Brock was coming closer, pulling the knife out of his palm with a strange blank look like he was wondering why it didn't hurt when it clearly should have. He clenched and unclenched his hand, watching the blood flow from the center with a morbid fascination. And he looked back down to her, eyes wide and very cold.

"We don't have very long left, you and I," he said softly, fungal slime dribbling from the corners of his mouth. She could see slick black fluid starting to tear from his eyes too. "But I'll tell you this, it won't last every long. It'll be over before you know it, and it'll be nice for you too, okay? Then you can go sleep forever. I'll make sure that happens. Death would be preferable to the fate the bloom's got in store for you."

"I'll kill you!" she screamed.

He said nothing, walked over before leaning down and grabbing at her body, she thrashed and kicked and screamed as he crawled over her and the two of them grappled, trying to force the knife in his palm into her chest. "Let go of me! I'll kill you! You bastard, you sick son of a –"

"_Help me!" _

The scream came out of nowhere and it seemed as though everyone in the room spontaneously froze.

There was nothing else in the seconds that came. Then –

"_Rachel! I'm scared… where are you?!_"

"What? What is this?" Brock mumbled, his voice quaking with fear. Then calling out louder, "That you, Sam?"

Nothing at first. Then a moaning, begging, screaming reply.

"_Help… Help me. Help me, Rachel!"_

What the fuck.

What in the fuck was going on.

All this time she'd thought the distant screaming and moaning that sounded so much like Sam was just a hallucination, something brought on by the bloom working its way through the canals of her brain, but now the moaning and screaming that sounded just like Sam sounded like it was coming from just outside the cabin.

And that was impossible.

Sam was dead.

She'd seen her die. Get dragged off into the brush by a grizzly bear that she distracted to save Rachel's life -

"Is that you, Sam?" Brock shouted. He hefted up the assault rifle in a firing position, his face turned towards the short hall that led to the front door.

"_Someone… anyone. Help me!_"

The voice, Sam's voice, sounded like it was on the verge of tears.

"We thought you were dead! Just hold on a little longer, Sam. Wait there for a second, I'm coming to fetch you!" He yelled, getting up and walking off in the direction of the door. The rifle he was aiming in a position ready to fire, however, spoke everything about what he intended to do.

He had simply left the two women to themselves and Rachel wasn't about to waste the opportunity, even as she was still reeling from the shock of discovering Sam was still alive. How? All they found was a bloodied scrap of cloth.

Was it possible, however unlikely, that Sam had managed to fight off the bear and escape on her own, only to become separated from the rest of the team?

"What the hell's happening, Rachel?" The terror in Karen's voice was palpable.

"I don't know."

"Where's Arcady?"

"I don't know."

"Is Sam alive?"

There was so much hope in her voice but Rachel didn't reply, simply cut as fast as she could at the rope that was still binding Karen. The priority she had in her head was that if she had Karen to help her that taking down Brock would be far more feasible than if she'd tried to warn Sam instead.

There was the heavy creaking sound of the door opening.

She had no idea if Sam had any idea what to expect and that for all intents and purposes Brock would very likely kill her, but she couldn't think about that now, dealing with Brock was the immediate priority.

The rope was cut, and slipped away.

"Alright, now we –"

Brock screamed.

Nothing but a long, drawn-out high-pitched scream.

And then the sound of bone crunching loudly, and just like that the scream abruptly cut off.

More crunching sounds, smaller this time, and interspersed with wet, meaty chewing noises.

Rachel gasped. Grabbed the dazed Karen and pulled her along into the smaller room. She slowly held a single trembling finger up to her lips.

Don't make a sound.

The realization dawned on both of them that there it wasn't a person that came through the door, but a monster.

A series of huffing snorts and breaths, animalistic.

Heavy footsteps plodding on the wood-planked floor, each one creating an ominous creak.

Whatever it was, it was very, very large.

Slowly, she peered over the corner of the wall to look into the hallway and the living room.

The soft rays of early sunrise cast the living room in an eerie red light. She could glimpse the shadow of something big, the silhouette growing closer and closer as the thing shambled into the cabin.

Stepping out before them, fresh blood and saliva drooling from its jaws and ragged flesh hanging from its teeth, was an absolutely massive grizzly bear.

A guttural yawning groan escaped the bear's throat. The breaths coming from it were throttling, shallow like it was having difficulty breathing, not deep and powerful. It sniffed at the floor as it shambled closer into the cabin, and as it stepped closer into the light Rachel could see something didn't look quite right with the bear. It was malformed, further mutated since the last time she saw it in a way she couldn't really describe yet under the poor lighting, but something had changed about it.

The bear snapped its head up, and Rachel ducked her head back inside the room.

She could only hear the bear's raspy breathing. The heavy footsteps.

It didn't seem to be coming any closer…

A very soft sound distracted her attention to Karen, who had clamped both her palms over shut over her mouth. Tears were streaming down her eyes, and she was struggling to contain moans of fear, the desire to scream.

Rachel shook her head rapidly at Karen, repeated her finger-on-the-lip gesture with a low, fearful shush. Resisted the urge to reach out and hold on to the psychologist's trembling form to steady and calm her. The bear didn't know they were in here yet. No, no, don't make a sound now! Don't panic!

And then they both heard it.

The voice was Sam's. But warped, distorted. Inhuman.

"_Where are you, Rachel? It hurts… Help me…_"

It sounded very, very close. It was… coming from the same place as where the bear presumably was. The living room.

What? What the hell?

The footsteps were coming closer. It sounded like it was just behind the thin section of wall she was hiding behind now. She could practically feel the bear, monster, Sam, whatever's breaths right on her neck.

"_Rachel… Help… It hurts… It hurts…_"

And it trailed off into a raspy, horrific giggle.

"_Good… good… No! Help meeee!" _

She winced, forcing her own hands over her ears. It wasn't just because of how loud it was. The sound was just wrong. It was a horrible perversion of everything she remembered about Sam, a reminder of how badly she had failed her, allowed Sam to be taken and mutated by the bloom into something that wasn't her. Karen was trembling nearby, unable to contain the muffled sobs and moans.

The animalistic breathing and snorting that followed it seemed to go on forever.

The bear huffed and groaned, made a sound like it was scratching at itself and shaking its fur.

Then finally, the footsteps started to move away from the two of them. It seemed to take forever but the heavy presence was walking off, further and further.

She heard the sound of something heavy being dragged across the wood floor.

And sobbing. A humanlike sobbing, so much like Sam's but twisted into something monstrous yet so unsettlingly human at the same time. It was softly crying, the noise punctuated by the bear's snorts and growls.

"_Sorry,_" Sam's voice mumbled miserably. It was a sick paradox, she pitied and yet was utterly repulsed by the perversion of what had happened to Sam.

Then silence.

Silence for several moments that stretched on and on.

Very, very slowly, she peeked back out of her cover to scan the room beyond.

There wasn't any sign of the bear or the bloom-mutated Sam or whatever the monster was in the living room, but she did see a single, human-looking arm was sticking out next to a couch, lit by the soft red light. Clutched in its cold, dead grip was an assault rifle. She couldn't see the rest of the body as it was blocked by the furniture, but Brock was the one with the assault rifle. So it would be Brock's body, then.

The creature must have dragged him deeper into the cabin, to feed on him later.

She watched the living room for several more moments, before feeling that the coast was clear enough for them to move. She turned to Karen, nodded.

Karen profusely shook her head. Clutched her arms tighter to her legs.

This wasn't the time to lose her nerve. Gritting her teeth she made a quick, forceful pulling gesture, and when Karen didn't react again she mouthed, 'The coast is clear'.

It took a moment after that for Karen to finally work her nerve back to follow her.

Creeping like rats in a pantry, they moved out into the living room. She glanced around, didn't see any signs of the monster. At the space they were in, bent down in the middle of the living room and bathed by soft red light she was painfully aware of how exposed they were, and that she had no idea where the monster was so an attack could come from anywhere.

The assault rifle was the absolute priority, as ineffective as small arms fire seemed to have been when she had encountered it days earlier it was still a means of defense, certainly better than the pitiful stopping power a handgun would offer her against a bear.

As quietly as she could she reached her hand out to grab the rifle -

The deep growling of a bear, somewhere.

She gasped. Slid against the couch and pulled Karen with her.

The heavy footsteps were coming closer.

A meaty dragging sound, Brock's body being moved away.

Sniffing, snorting.

The creature was practically right next to her as its massive head emerged from behind the couch.

She took deep breaths, tried not to look at it even as her heart pounded and told her to run. She was completely exposed, and the bear knew she was here.

Keeping her eyes down and trying not to make sudden motions that could set it off she laid a hand on Karen's own and squeezed. The blonde woman was trembling pathetically, crying in fear.

She could feel the hot breath of the animal on her face.

It chewed. Licked its mouth.

"_Help me._"

There was no denying it, the voice was coming from the bear. Sam's corrupted voice. This time her resolve to keep as calm as possible faltered and she shivered, Sam's voice chilled her to the very bone, an endless ghostly repetition of her last words before she died. It really got to her, because she knew exactly what Sam was thinking and feeling in her last moments as she was dragged off. She didn't know why the bear could mimic the voice so perfectly, and she thought about the pair of human jaws and teeth she had seen inside the bear's throat.

"_It… hurts… Everything hurts! Help….. me! Help meeeeee!" _

A soft, slimy splattering, like saliva or blood drooling from the bear's jaws onto the floor.

She shut her eyes when the bear suddenly roared in her face. There was no Sam in it, it was the primal roar of a beast. It was hot, and it stank of meat and wild animal.

Then abruptly it seemed to look away.

The thing was lumbering away, back to the hall that led to the door, it seemed.

She took the brief moment of reprieve to look over themselves. Karen was cowering, her hands raised over her head to protect herself from an inevitable attack. She glanced down at the floor, at the fresh pawprints that stained of blood. There were splinters in the wood, like the bear had dug its own claws into them.

Looking back around her cover she saw Brock's body lying face-down further away than it was. He was motionless, and his leg had been horribly ripped up. It was bad enough that she could see shards of white bone sticking out of his knee, the blood pouring out onto the floor, but after what he had tried to do to her she couldn't feel any pity for him. Her eyes fell to the assault rifle that he was still holding.

Get to the weapon.

As fast as she could.

Crawling on all fours she made another attempt at reaching the gun when she felt a hand frantically tapping on her leg.

Karen.

Then ragged animalistic breaths, lumbering footsteps. She turned around to see the that bear was moving out of a space in the corner, where it had been hidden by the shadows.

As it moved in front of the window the ominous red light of sunrise fell upon it, and she could see it clearly for the first time.

Yes, it had been further mutated since the last time she encountered it, jagged plates of fungal growth covering the entire left side of its body in malformations. It could have just been a trick of the light but it looked like the musculature had grown as well, exposed tissue bursting out of fur and blood seeping out of countless parts on its body which had grown faster than the fur could contain.

"_Rachel. Rachel. Rachel. Rachel. Rachel. Rachel. Rachel,_" it mindlessly repeated with Sam's voice in a crazed mantra.

Then she noticed that the bear's mouth didn't move at all when it spoke.

She took her eyes off of the bear's face, looked at a protrusion on the side of its head.

The bear walked closer, its eyes staring blankly at Rachel. It suddenly paused, and whimpered as it shook its head as though it was in pain. The sound was surprisingly weak, and pathetic.

And then Sam's voice screamed. Pain, and agony.

The voice wasn't coming out of the bear's mouth. Instead the strange protrusion of flesh on its side twitched, and seemingly forced apart two sets of muscles like a mouth.

The bear looked off to its right as it moaned and growled, shuddering like it itself was frightened. And in doing so it exposed the right side of its body to Rachel more clearly, she could see the deformations and mutated flesh and –

Sam's face was staring back at her.

A spine, a human spine, jutting out of the entire length of the bear's torso and rising and falling at random points. There were bones poking out here and there, she could see traces of a human ribcage, the flesh looking like it was peeling right off the bones and merging into the bear's body. It almost looked like her body had been dissolved, or was in the process of dissolving and fusing with the body of the bear. Terminating at the end of the spine, at the side of the bear's head was a second, human head, twisted at an angle that would have snapped its neck if it were still a normal human. The head was gasping, the breath straining like the very act of breathing was painful. It, she, seemed to be breathing at its own separate pace to the bear, and she could see the face's eyes blinking and looking around madly.

Sam.

Compared to the rest of her body her head seemed intact, skin still wrapped around her skull instead of fusing with the bear's and even still retaining her hair, but the skin was a sick, raw shade of pink, turning translucent at points and exposing the muscles beneath. Staining her cheeks were trails of black slick coming from her eyes, and as she opened and closed her mouth her arm twitched. A single remaining human arm was all that was left of her limbs, but twisted and hanging at a broken angle, the skin and muscle clearly absorbing into the body of the bear and pulling the skin tight in unnatural directions whenever the arm shuddered.

The face froze when it locked its eyes with Rachel.

It opened her mouth.

"_Help me Rachel…_"

And at Sam's realization of Rachel's presence the bear immediately looked back straight at her, and it bellowed. It made her wonder why the biological fusion had happened and how it was working. Were they two separate organisms merged into a single body but with organs that were still separate, or were there things Sam were sharing with the bear? Could the bear know Sam's thoughts and vice versa? Had Sam possibly even mutated into a parasitic growth that was feeding on the bear and causing it pain and distress, against her will?

Was this the fate that would have awaited Rachel had Sam not saved her life?

The bear walked right up to her. It sniffed her neck, her face.

A long tongue slithered out of its mouth and snaked its way across her face. It was hot and rancid, with a texture like sandpaper.

She could hear Sam crying. Sobbing as the bear she had partially become licked a potential new victim.

And it opened its mouth, exposing the rows of jagged teeth within. It was easily big enough to envelop her entire head, she realized.

It didn't attack immediately, its mouth slowly coming onto her face as she saw the bear's gums actually start to peel out of its mouth. She saw the set of human jaws inside and wondered if it actually came from somebody else that the bear had killed, transformed, absorbed, whatever.

She realized tears were coming out her eyes out of sheer terror and tried to think rationally about her options.

A knife would do no good in her situation.

The flash grenade?

Maybe.

At most it would stun and disorient the bear, buy her and Karen precious seconds to escape the cabin…

Her finger slowly reached down and held around the grenade, and she pulled it out of the holster.

Karen was moaning and crying too, slowly trying to crawl away from Rachel and the bear, and just like that the bear switched targets, turning to carry its gaping jaws towards her instead.

The realization that the bear was now coming for now sent Karen into a panicked frenzy, she clutched her hands together and was shaking her head, tears streaming down her face profusely as she mindlessly prayed and begged for the animal to spare her life. Very slowly, almost gently, the bear enveloped its massive jaws around her neck.

Sam moaned and screamed, whether out of pain or horror at what the bear was doing she had no idea. The bear hadn't actually bitten down, Karen was still breathing and shaking from sheer terror as the animal seemed to test and probe its teeth on her throat. She had no idea why the bear was doing what it was doing. Maybe it was just animalistic curiosity, or it could be toying with its prey, but Rachel had to do something fast, if it applied just a small amount of pressure more…

A scraping noise somewhere behind her, and then the bear's attention was drawn to something else. Someone else. It looked to her side and roared.

Rapid footsteps. She chanced a look behind her to see Brock up on his feet, limping away from them and making for the door. He had to grab on to the wall to support himself, and as he limped further his handprint left a trail of smudged blood.

"_Please… Help me!_" Sam screamed.

And the bear charged for him, slamming through the couch and sending Rachel to the ground.

She didn't know what happened next, she didn't see it, but Brock was screaming horribly as she heard the sound of teeth biting down upon flesh and a body being messily tossed about like it was a ragdoll. A series of thuds like the bear was slamming him against the wall, into the floor, wood cracking and smashing, a wet stabbing noise like a blade frantically connecting with fur and fat and flesh.

Then a sick, slow tearing sound and his screams cut off permanently.

Something rolled across the floor.

Then out of the darkness rolled something spherical, like a ball. It came to a stop in the middle, right next to the hyperventilating Karen, and it was Brock's severed head, the facial muscles still twitching in his death throes.

Somewhere in the dark the bear roared, Sam screamed, and Rachel scrambled to her feet, and made a mad dash to finally grab the assault rifle. It was unfired and she made sure it was ready to shoot –

She cried out in pain as the mass slammed its full weight into her, sending her flying across the room, and before she could even recover it was already onto her, growling as it immediately went for her throat. She blindly reached her arm around and found something, a fire poker than the bear's jaws latched on to, but it only held it back for a moment before the poker snapped in two and the bear went for her again. She screamed and thrashed as they struggled. It wasn't the slow, deliberate play-like behavior it had shown earlier, the bear was now attempting to go for the kill.

Somewhere in the struggle she realized the flash grenade she was clutching in her hand moments ago was rolling on the floor next to her. With one mad, thrashing hand, she felt around managed to grab the can-shaped explosive.

Screaming in terror and rage she pulled the pin off the flash grenade and with all her might, jammed it into the bear's jaws.

And the bear recoiled, apparently not anticipating having something hard and unfamiliar being shoved into its teeth, and in the instant of reprieve she rolled out from beneath the bear's massive form and ran for cover. Karen was standing there in a fearful daze and she tackled her, sending them both pinning to the floor –

The flash grenade detonated.

A brilliant blast of light, the deafening sound of an explosion.

She remained there, holding Karen to the ground and head ducked down, for several seconds before she realized there weren't any sounds that she could hear. The living room was dead silent.

"Is it… dead?" Karen hushed fearfully.

"Let's take a look."

Slowly, they peeked up from their cover, glimpsed around the living room. Gore and viscera was messily strewn about the room, bits of brain and bone, and –

The bear was still standing. But it wasn't moving at all. It was gently swaying back and forth, otherwise standing still where it was.

And she saw that half the bear's face was just gone. The right side blasted apart into nothing. Blood, torrents of it, were gushing out of the cavity where half the bear's head used to be, splattering onto the floor. The mutated monster itself didn't seem to realize what had happened, that it was already a dead animal, as it simply stood there for several seconds.

Then finally it moved. An awkward, uncoordinated step of one of its paws, turning to face them. It trembled in its step like it was trying to learn how to move again, nerves trying to adjust to the sudden lack of a brain. The blood continued to pour out of the exposed braincase.

It was Karen's scream of rage that startled her more than anything else. Letting out a furious cry, the helpless psychologist picked up the fallen assault rifle, ran right in front of the bear, and let loose. At point-blank range, she wasn't missing anything.

"I'll kill you, you fucking bastard! That's what you get! Just die and fucking stay dead!"

The bear twitched and spasmed as round after round of assault rifle fire struck it in what was left of its head and brain. Bits of skull and flesh blew off as the hail of gunfire rapidly disintegrated what was left of its head into messy chunks.

The rifle clicked empty.

Even with its head thoroughly destroyed the bear remained standing for just a moment more, before it finally slumped to the ground in a massive heave.

Karen stood there panting before she tossed away the spent rifle, and then she, too collapsed to the ground, the adrenaline wearing off as she rubbed away the tears.

It was finally over.

"_Rachel…_"

The bear's body twitched.

"What the hell! Stay dead!" Karen screamed as she bolted back up to her legs, her tone angry and frustrated, and she kicked the bear's corpse.

"Karen, Karen, Karen!" Rachel yelled as she ran over and grabbed hold of the psychologist. "It's me, look at me! Look at me, Karen!"

She did.

"It's over, okay?! It's dead now. It's over."

The anger dissipated, and now she sobbed as she grabbed hold of Rachel for comfort she couldn't provide. "When is it going to be over? I don't wanna be here anymore. I wanna go home!"

Abruptly she turned to the side where there was nobody but thin air, and screamed, "For the last time, shut up! I know I should have done more, but I just don't have the spine, okay!"

She turned back around like what was definitely a reaction to a hallucination had never happened at all. And with her hands placed on Rachel's chest, she shoved her away. Pointed an accusing finger. "I… I wanted to go home… get on a boat and… I just wanna go home…"

"And we'll go home once we call for help at the lab," she lied.

Karen raised her hand and opened her mouth as if to say something, call her out for her bullshit, but nothing came out.

Between the two of them still panting at the ordeal that they had just escaped from, they realized that there was a third rhythm. Something else besides them that was breathing as well.

The bear's corpse didn't just twitch like that of a freshly killed corpse, one of its legs actually jolted from one position to another.

It was enough to make Karen yell and kick the corpse again, then again to make sure it was dead.

Rachel held her back by the shoulder.

There was still a third voice in the room, breathing.

Slowly, she bent down next to the right side of the bear's body, and took a closer look at the pathetic, horrifically mutated mess that was what was left of Sam.

Sam's breathing was even more labored and agonizing. Blood, thick orange blood, seeped out of her mouth. She looked up at Rachel, and the two of them locked eyes.

There was no speaking, no last words or a begging for a mercy death or thanks for putting her out of her misery, no shred of dignity. Sam shuddered and gasped in agony, crying soft cries that sounded like that of a miserable child in pain. Her one arm twitched, the skin stretching taut as if she was trying to reach the arm out to no avail. Rachel couldn't tell if she was feeling pain or fear.

Then just like that, with one final choking gasp, it was over.

Sam fell silent, and became very still.


	13. Serenity

**Serenity**

They were in a modest apartment in Los Angeles, as modest as it could be with how increasingly difficult it was to secure an affordable place to live in the big city. Her sister's career as a voice actor voicing wacky one-note side characters in cartoons and anime dubs helped keep a roof over her head as she waited for her Hollywood big break, but it was a dream that, as far as Rachel saw it, was slipping further and further away. She was only visiting because she happened to be in the area, having come here to have a discussion with a genetics engineering researcher based in the BSAA offices in Southern California. She had come here to learn more about the genetic adaptability and sheer number of manmade breeds of the plagas parasites from one of the experts on the field, for a study she was making on how artificial gene technology could impact the breeding of new species of animal for agricultural purposes, and when Maggie found out about her coming down her first response was to excitedly invited her over.

There wasn't a reason for her to say no, which was she was sitting here now in her sister's couch, watching – or rather, ignoring – the TV as her sister made her a cup of tea.

"Don't you wanna meet Ben?"

"Who?" she asked, genuinely confused.

Maggie rolled her eyes dramatically.

"Rachel, I've already told you. He's my fiancé."

A pause. Then, "Oh."

Now she remembered.

"Yeah, but _who _is he?"

Again Maggie groaned in annoyance. "Told you already too, Rachel. He works marketing in TerraSave, I met him two years ago when they hired me to narrate one of their promo films. He's really a sweet, awesome dude, you know!"

"I'm pretty sure he is," she replied, monotone with no change in intonation.

"I'm serious!"

"Did I say you weren't?"

"Marcus approves of him, okay?" Her sister ignored the grunt of annoyance from Rachel, just continued. "We're gonna get married next year, that's like five months from now, and you're not interested in seeing him yet?"

And she groaned in frustration, and finally gave up. "Fine, fine, I'll meet my future brother-in-law, if it'll keep you from pestering me about it."

"Boo-hoo-hoo. That's now what I'm asking from you, sis."

"Look, you told me to see this fiancé of yours and now that I've said I will you're feeling upset?" Rachel questioned.

"You're just doing it because someone else's expecting you to. Or maybe something else, I don't know," Maggie teased, and tossed one of the pillows on the couch at her. She easily caught the pillow and tossed it back. Maggie caught it and wagged a finger at Rachel.

"But think about the stuff deep down in your heart, Rachel. What is it that you _want_?

###

Julie Arcady returned about an hour later.

It wasn't even a particularly dramatic occurrence. Karen had moved Brock's body outside, wrapped it with a tarp, and she was considering whether to bury him or burn him or simply leave the bastard to rot when she heard the footsteps. She thought it to be Rachel, at first, but when the presence didn't speak or acknowledge her she looked behind herself and saw the geologist sit herself down on the porch. Sigh deeply.

"Julie?"

Her clothes, her face, they were all stained with blood and black stuff that seemed to have splattered onto her from another source, which could only mean she got into a fight with one of the monsters on the island at some point in the night, but otherwise she was fine.

No visible injuries, no nothing. Her assault rifle was still slung around her body.

"Oh my god Julie!"

And without thinking about it she rushed forth and hugged her. She didn't know why she felt so _glad _to know that Arcady was alive, that she was apparently well. 'I didn't know if you were dead,' she tried to mumble, which trailed off into nothing but incoherent mutterings and sobs as she took in the fact that Arcady, at the very least, was still there to be with them.

And she noticed Arcady hadn't said anything, showed no reaction to being hugged by Karen. Nor did she seem to acknowledge the body Karen was dealing with in any way, didn't ask who it was or what had happened the night after she left.

There was a strange, focused look in Julie's eyes.

Like she was deep in thought. Considering something.

"Julie?"

She remained staring, iron-gazed, for several moments.

Then at long last she looked up at Karen, and blinked like it was her first time seeing her since shoving her off and threatening to kill her…

Did Julie do that? Threaten to shoot her?

Where did that memory come from?

"Hey there, Karen," was Julie's casual reply.

"What the hell happened? Where did you go? Rachel and I, we thought you were dead."

She didn't reply. Just looked at her before shaking her head with a disappointed smile like she was the only one in a group who understood a bad joke. "Nothing happened," she simply said. "I just had some fresh air like I said. That's all."

0o0

_Everything's breaking down. I can't tell what's real anymore._

_Sometimes I feel like someone else._

0o0

She was packing everything up for the last stretch of travel.

Rations had more or less disappeared, despite her scant memories of actually eating.

Ammunition added up to 2 spare magazines of 9mm handgun rounds. It added up to 36 total rounds, which really wasn't much considering the threats she had to anticipate.

The assault rifle and all their stock of 5.56 ammunition was completely spent after days of use. It was just dead weight now.

No more medical supplies. She hadn't bothered to do anything with the wounds she sustained when the bear mauled her again other than slapping a bandage on it and calling it a day. After all, her time was already limited. Didn't matter much anyway if it wasn't real flesh that would regrowing from the wounds, but flesh that was tainted and corrupted by the bloom and its mutations.

No more tent or bedding. She wasn't expecting herself to sleep comfortably anytime soon.

Clothes? All she was wearing on her. They were bloodied, ripped up and stained with filth, but she didn't care by this point.

Footsteps were coming into the room, and it sounded like there was more than one set of legs.

"Rachel?"

"Karen," she acknowledged.

"You're packing up already?"

"I have to go now."

"Julie's come back. She's alive."

She spared a look behind her, and saw Julie Arcady standing there behind Karen, seemingly no worse than when she threatened Rachel and left into the night only hours ago.

"Oh." She couldn't even feel surprised anymore.

"Hello, Rachel," she said.

Rachel didn't reply. Resumed the checkover of her inventory. "I have to keep moving."

"I?" Karen pointedly asked in a low voice.

"The rate of the infection is getting worse, can't you feel it in your bones? And the disease is not gonna stop there."

"You're right that I can feel the disease in my bones," Julie murmured, eyes still downcast. She still had not elaborated on what she had gone through when she ventured outside alone and Rachel didn't bother to press her.

"Exactly," Rachel said. "We have to assume that we're the only survivors left. Everyone else is gone. And at this rate… we're not gonna be coming out of this the same people who came in. I'm not gonna come out."

A brief silence. Then Karen, "Excuse me?"

She didn't bother to elaborate.

"The fishing village is only a few hours away from here. If you want to leave now, I understand. Head back to the village, find a radio, or fix up a boat so you can get out of here. You too, Julie. But don't you wait for me."

She meant it.

At the rate this was going she knew that if she continued her path to the Garden, she would not make it out of here. At best, she would be killed. At worst, she'd end up like the man in the lighthouse. Or Sam. Mutated into something she couldn't recognize and left to suffer forever until the release of death.

And she didn't want to drag Karen and Julie down with her. Not anymore.

"I'm not heading that way either," Julie suddenly spoke up. Both the other women in the group turned to her.

Karen looked incredulous. Shocked and disbelieving.

"Julie, do you know what you are walking into?"

"Yeah," she said, almost serenely. "We're just bleeding into each other until we're reduced to our smallest fragments, and reformed again."

"Excuse me?!" Karen's voice raised again. "Do you… do you expect me to get out of this place and make it all the way to the village and fix up a boat, alone?"

Rachel ignored her.

But as cryptic as Julie's statement was it tied into the theory that she had. Something she agreed with. "Karen," she called out. "My current theory is," she hesitantly began to explain to the frantic woman, pausing to look at her before she continued.

"My current theory is that it… it turns our minds to spaghetti. Tangles and weaves it with… I don't know. The minds of others who have been infected. Splits our minds, souls, fuses it with others and splits it again… and again, and again, with no real direction or malevolence. It simply is. It happened with those men I heard, who have the same memories of the same wife. It happened… well, it happened to me, too, and even right now, in this moment, it's happening. We're losing pieces of our bodies, and pieces of our minds, every part of us is disintegrating! Bits of us bleeding into each other. I can't say if even I'm completely who I was when I got here. We'll lose memories, gain memories that aren't ours to begin with, and…"

Even she was having a hard time believing it.

It was terrifying thought, the notion of losing their sense of self and who they are.

Karen was totally silent as she tried her best to comprehend this information.

"No," she said softly, and Rachel didn't know if it was in horror or in rejection.

"So you see," Rachel continued, "If you want to leave, please. Otherwise, I'm going to finish this alone." She turned to Julie and nodded in acknowledgement.

Leaving Karen behind, the two of them had not even walked out the cabin yet when there was a scuttle of footsteps, and she felt Karen's hand grip onto her arm.

It was surprisingly strong.

"No no no, wait!"

"Karen?"

Karen looked around herself, like she was expecting danger incoming at any direction.

"I'll come with you, okay? Yeah. I'm coming with you."

"Karen, if you want to leave –"

"I mean it, too. I mean, I've already come all this way, huh? Might as well make it to the end."

She put on a smile that did not look sincere in the least, and there was a strange, pointed look to her eyes that was directed entirely at Rachel. It felt very uncomfortable.

But Rachel wasn't about to deny help if it was offered to her.

She couldn't remember all the journey, only little increments and glimpses of it.

They saw stranger things as they trekked deeper, and deeper, into the center of the island.

A dog with two heads scampered past them, and it didn't show any aggression, simply bolted away from them when they approached it. It had appeared mangy and sickly, the second head a deformed growth, and the dog's fear of humans was a sign of something she hadn't confirmed yet, but was sure she was right about.

And they saw trees, trees which had been almost entirely consumed by the bloom.

The entire length of the pine trunks were covered over with walls upon walls of disgusting fleshy fungus, foreign organic growths that weaved and fused with the natural green of the leaves. Clouds of diamond dust spores hung in the air, released from the bloom-mutated trees to blow and scatter across the island.

Hanging from one of the mutated trees' branches was a stealth fighter plane, a high-tech modern vehicle that now sat rusted and neglected, its pilot still hanging from a parachute nearby that had been caught on tree branches.

His skull was twisted into a grin, like a grotesque warning sign as they proceeded deeper to reach the Garden.

Dark clouds were rolling across the island, and they could feel a growing moisture in the air that wasn't just the spores of the bloom.

"Seems like rain," Arcady muttered, looking up at the sky. Minutes later the first fat raindrops began to land.

###

By the time they reached cover the rain had already escalated into a full-on thunderstorm. There was a high-pitched whistling to the wind when they made it inside the concrete building that seemed rather out of place in the woods, raindrops pounding furiously against the walls and the windows.

"We're not going anywhere awhile. Have to wait it out," Rachel said, more a reminder to herself than to the others.

"No shit," Karen muttered.

It wasn't clear exactly what kind of building they had found themselves in but what was clear was that there were corpses scattered about the room. They wore military uniforms, some of them still clutching weapons on their death throes, but evidently these bodies had been here long enough that the flesh had rotted away, leaving only dry skin and bones.

Strange that she couldn't see no sign of post-mortem mutation on these bodies. Same with the hanging corpse in the cabin.

There must have been something connecting all of this together but she couldn't figure it out yet.

She wasn't even sure now if these bodies were even U.S. military in the first place. What she had gleamed from the collection of mad diaries in the attic told her that the people sent to this island came from all over, Navy, Marines, Army, Coast Guard. What was to say these bodies were federal American soldiers for sure? They could have been private military contractor for all she knew.

In any case, the uniforms were too old and rotted to tell where which group came from. Any evidence of which unit they belonged to if any, if it hadn't decayed to nothing, had been destroyed.

Karen's eyes seemed to be drawn to a large, blocky handgun on the ground. It glinted almost like silver in the dark. She hauled up the weapon lying there on the ground. Cocked it. Loaded. Unlike the shotgun in the cabin, it still seemed to have a full magazine of ammunition chambered in it.

She vaguely recognized it, a Lightning Hawk magnum handgun. Gas-operated and chambered for .50 action express. Considered impractical overkill in most circumstances. She supposed she should be surprised that Karen now knew how to use and operate a very rare collector's weapon, but by this point there was little she could feel surprised about anymore.

Karen caught sight of the way Rachel was looking at her and, apparently taking it the wrong way, pressed the magnum closer to her chest.

"This is mine," she said possessively.

She raised a defensive hand, moved on with her investigation.

There was a single corpse that wasn't like the rest of the bodies in the room.

Unlike the others which were intact, this one had mutated. His finger bones had stretched to talon-like lengths, and gestations of the bloom had sprouted forth from his everywhere to fuse his corpse to the chair that he was still sitting on There were other bits of bones, human-like, that stuck out of the fungal biomass that she couldn't recognize. Whether they were extra bone growths or his actual original skeleton being ripped apart and pushed out by the bloom growing inside his abdomen, she didn't know.

But the way it looked, his death looked rather slow and painful.

It didn't look as old as the other bodies, too. This was only partially skeletonized, although she didn't know whether that was because of the bloom's influence. His face looked reasonably intact, the skin stretched-out looking and looking almost mummified. Strangely enough, the way his eyes were closed looked rather peaceful.

Julie was bent down over that one particular corpse. Held in her hands was a tattered small book, a diary. She was reading through its pages, with a kind of resigned look in her eyes.

"Found any useful information?"

She just sighed.

"Depends on what you deem useful."

"If it tells us more about what we are walking into…"

"This guy kept seeing a little kid everywhere. Hearing a little kid's voice. It was driving him nuts because it turns out his son had drowned when he was three. And when he was asleep, he thought he had woken up from a nightmare because he was celebrating his kid's tenth birthday."

Against all expectations she smiled at Rachel, a sad smile, and dropped the diary to the ground.

"He decided he wanted to live in this reality where he had a son, he had his wife back, and the nightmare where his kid died was just that. A nightmare. So he decided to… let himself go."

She looked away from Rachel, right into the corpse's sleeping eyes.

"He did this to himself?"

"I don't think so," Julie answered.

Almost gently, she took hold of the body's head and turned it over for Rachel to see the massive gaping hole in the side of his skull.

"Someone else did him in."

"They put him out of his misery," Rachel quietly confirmed.

Julie shot her a strange look that seemed sad, almost disappointed.

"I don't know if I would call it that."

And she got up and walked away without another word.

###

She found Karen sitting by herself in what must have once been a kitchen. Rachel wasn't sure at first what she was doing. Playing with a switchblade, flipping it around and running her hand across the flat end of the blade didn't seem like much of a productive use of her time. She seemed engrossed by the knife, staring at it with a strange kind of fascinated look as she toyed it around. She didn't turn to look at Rachel before she spoke.

"What do you think exactly happened to Sam?"

Her voice was dreamy, disconnected.

"She fused with the bear, with the bloom as a bonding agent. I can't imagine genetic fusion like that with two adult, independent organisms being merged into a single being. The blood flow, the differences in blood type, the internal organs, I don't understand how –"

"Do you think the bear fused her to itself, or it was all the bloom's work?"

She considered it for a while. If circumstances had permitted it, she would have wanted to perform an autopsy on the bear itself, figure out exactly how its twisted anatomy functioned, but it simply wasn't possible. Not with the resources on hand, and not with the amount of time she had left.

"I'm not sure," she finally admitted. "But it's an interesting idea for a B.O.W. nonetheless. It wouldn't be surprise me if that was how the bear was engineered."

"I'm not so sure if that bear was made by people in the first place. What if it was a wild animal that didn't ask for this?"

"Even wild animals afflicted by random mutations can still evolve traits that can be isolated for proper B.O.W. production. Most B.O.W.s today are clones of random mutations that were considered just right, after all. It's essentially the result of throwing things at a wall and picking out what sticks to improve those and put them on a production line. I'm not saying the bear itself was a B.O.W., it probably wasn't. But the mutations it had, if considered from the perspective of a virologist who engineers B.O.W.s, is actually very remarkable."

"I don't see how that bear assimilating the people it eats can be remarkable in any way…" Karen replied with a disturbed shudder.

"Think about it this way. You have an organism that has the ability to perfectly mimic the voices of its victims. It does so by… absorbing them into its body, brain and vocal cords intact. This organism attacks individuals one-by-one and fuses them into its own body. Using human speech, it lures in more victims. It's not the most practical weapon if you just want to kill enemies efficiently, but if someone on the market is looking for something that has a more psychological effect on combatants, it has significant potential. The Army tried a similar approach once, in Vietnam. They would play faked recordings of dead Vietnamese spirits in the night to spook the Vietcong, really get under their skin. Psychological warfare. It's the same principle, but this would be far more effective than just a voice recording."

"You really think about that kind of thing, huh? 'Potential'. 'Psychological effect.'"

She realized how she was making herself sound like and immediately raised her arms, defensively.

"I can't condone it on moral grounds, but I have to admit the nature of the bloom is fascinating. Dangerous, but fascinating. If only from a purely scientific point of view."

She meant it. She could never, but at least from the perspective she just described the bloom made some sort of sense. And she did mean it when she said she found it fascinating. The bloom was unlike anything she'd ever seen and in a way, she was enthralled by the prospect of picking it apart to learn more about its nature.

Karen regarded her with an incredulous stare.

"Fascinating? That the term - you're fascinated? Is that what Sam was like to you? She was fascinating?" she quietly accused.

They stared at each other like that for what felt like long minutes, never letting their gaze fall off of each other.

"By the way," Karen noted in a dull, low voice, "You notice that you haven't been like yourself lately?"

"Yeah, I've definitely been feeling under the weather," she muttered with a bitter edge.

Karen shook her head. Not what she meant.

"No, you're –" and she gestured vaguely around her own throat. "Your voice. Your accent."

"What about it?"

"You never noticed? You been speaking a lot like a homegrown Southern belle now. Since morning. And I do mean it sounds real, not like some fool with a fake accent. Not an easy thing to fake."

She tilted her head down to one side, and an eerie, resigned smile suddenly came upon her lips. "You kinda sound like me."

She said nothing back. Just a solid stare.

She knew it was happening on some level, seeing as she was even the one to explain it herself. But to be told that it was happening, to realize that what Karen said was true, to acknowledge that she was breaking down on that level, that was something else. Knowing Sam's thoughts as she was being dragged off by the bear wasn't the same as this.

Being confronted with evidence that her sense of self was being chipped away, one fragment at a time, was terrifying.

It was something else to become a monster, as she had initially anticipated. Her mind being reduced to that of a feral, raging beast? That was one thing.

But to slowly lose her sense of identity, lose the parts of herself that made Rachel Yun _Rachel Yun_, and knowing she was utterly helpless to resist it?

It was something else entirely.

Accents were a strong thing, a remarkably significant part of self-identity. And how, she realized, she had indeed been speaking with an accent with the exact same pronunciations and intonations of Karen's Texas drawl. She wasn't even forcing it. It was simply how the words had come out, like she had been speaking with it all her life.

All she could do was silently take in the knowledge that there were parts of her that were lost forever, and she might not even be aware of them.

"You hear that?"

There was a low, quiet sound coming from upstairs, like something heavy being dragged across the flooring. She wasn't even aware there was a second floor. They hadn't found stairs and the building appeared small, only one-story from the outside. "I'll go check it out," she said.

There had been a staircase around one corner and she didn't even know how the three of them, all of them, had missed it. She held the pistol at the ready as she went up.

The second floor seemed featureless, almost. Devoid of structures and furniture, filled only with the concrete walls and tiles which seemed to be rusting in the humidity. She pulled away cobwebs at a door, opened it with a rusted metal creak. Nothing inside.

She thumbed at the radio on her belt.

Radio?

At some point she must got her hands on the personal shortwave radio. She couldn't remember how and where, maybe it was from the corpse of the fighter jet pilot. Maybe she had it with her all along?

She couldn't remember. A radio was important. How did she miss getting her hands on one or recalling that she had one?

And suddenly static began to blare out, white noise filling the room. With a grunt of annoyance she began fiddling with the radio, the squeal of static sharply rising and falling, and in that moment she wasn't expecting actual words to explode out of the mindless static.

"_There – nyone – there?_"

The voice sounded familiar.

"Marcus?"

"_don't – eel ris – outbreak – out –_"

"Marcus, is that you?"

"_come here – see –"_

The static cut out, and she was left with an empty, strangely driven feeling in her.She was sure of it, she had heard Marcus' voice on the radio.

Was he still here? Alive on this island somehow?

If Darren could make it, why not her brother?

There was nothing else she found in the second floor, which made her wonder what that noise they heard was.

###

Julie was missing again when the rain came to an end, but Karen seemed remarkably nonplussed about it when Rachel came back downstairs and asked where she was. "Look for yourself," she muttered, seemingly more interested in wrapping fresh white bandages around her shoulder. There were dark rusty-red stains on the white cloth. She didn't recall Karen being injured on that particular spot on her limb, and she had an idea about what she'd find under the bandage, but rather than press it she left it as it was.

She left Karen behind to finish up on her first-aid as she walked out the building. The flowers and the grass smelled rather nice in the wake of the rain.

"Julie?"

She didn't see her anywhere at the front. Where the hell was she?

"Where are you, Julie?"

Then she walked around the back of the building and saw her.

The geologist was standing there in the middle of the field, staring off into the distant trees. Her fists clenched and unclenched.

Rachel paused, suddenly feeling very unsure about how to approach the situation. For all she knew Julie might mistake her for a hostile hallucination and attack.

Her hand reached down and held onto the P226. Clicked the safety off as she approached, thinking about the next words to say.

Just in case.

"Look, all of us have been infected with the bloom. That's a fact. I can't guarantee that we can find a cure in the Garden, but…"

It was a lie she was telling herself by this point and she knew it. Just a sweet lie because she knew there was very likely no chance of a cure in the Garden. She certainly wasn't looking for a cure anymore. They were all already far beyond help, even with a hypothetical cure.

They were dead women walking only it wasn't even death that awaited them.

She had no way of knowing for certain what hallucinations Julie was experiencing, but if her guess was true…

Julie's right fist suddenly opened, her fingers stretching wide. Trails of black fluid streaked down her wrists and dripped on the wet grass.

"I've seen my kids, Rachel. They ran up to me and held my hands. Called me mommy." She chuckled weakly. "You call it a disease like it's a bad thing. Huh." She looked around her with a calm expression, looked down at her fluid-stained palms and softly closed them in a manner as if she was squeezing the hand of a child that wasn't there. "Maybe it's not such a bad disease after all."

Oh, no.

At once she recognized the gravity of what Julie just said.

"Don't do this, Julie. It's not real. That's the fungus fucking with your brain."

"I know it's not real," Julie confessed softly. "But what if it isn't?" She turned to Rachel and she could see the beginnings of tears trailing from her eyes.

The tears were black, slick like oil.

Black strands were corrupting her neck, her shoulders, and before Rachel's eyes they spread and grew across her skin.

But Julie didn't seem to mind them any attention at all.

"If I can touch them, smell them, feel them, then that makes them as good as real, doesn't it? Even if nobody else thinks it is," she pleaded. She could see that Julie wanted to listen to her, she really did. There was a part of her that genuinely wanted to reject the fantasies being dangled in front of her eyes but it was a losing battle.

"Your family is dead, Julie. There's nothing that's gonna change that."

"I know that!" she screamed. "But what if that doesn't have to be? What if I can be with my family again? Make things right? Even if it's just through smoke and mirrors?" She was heaving, panting, clearly struggling desperately with the choice she was about to make.

She turned away, back towards the forest. Gazed at it for several seconds like there were voices calling out to her from away.

"Julie, please. Don't do this," she begged.

And Julie turned to look at Rachel again for the last time. This time her tears trailed long, joining with the beginnings of the bloom's growth over her neck. The assault rifle she had been gripping weakly in her hands dropped to the ground. "I have to be with my family again."

"I'm sorry, Rachel. I tried. I tried real hard."

With those last words, she looked away towards the trees and took a hesitant step forward. When she took a second step her expression subtly changed, the fear and terror giving way to curiosity. By the time she took a fourth step there was the beginnings of a smile on her lips, and with the steps afterwards the smile hardened into the look where she finally knew she was making the right decision. Her stride flowed, gaining confidence as she willfully walked deeper and deeper into oblivion.

Rachel took a desperate step forward as if to restrain her but stopped immediately. At that moment the realization came on to her that nothing she did would stop Arcady from changing the last choice she would ever make in life.

She was aware of Karen joining her, yelling and running to grab at Julie, only to stop when she realized the complete, genuine bliss that was on Julie. For the first time since she had seen her, and for a very long time before that, she looked completely happy.

Julie Arcady walked with complete serenity into the forest, her arms open in an embrace of the bloom, and before long she had vanished into the trees forever.


	14. Breakthrough

**Breakthrough**

"What do we do now?"

"We press on."

"Rachel. It's just the two of us left."

"I know that."

"You're asking me to die."

"And you already agreed to follow me. Even when I told you it's already too late to make a difference. Why the change of heart?"

"Because Julie was willing to go with you, and now she's gone!"

"And what do you want to do now?"

"…I want to crack open a beer with my family. Friends. I want to kick back and play guitar, get drunk, spend the rest of the night with someone I love, feel happy about life. I… I want… I want…"

Soft sobbing into her hands.

It soon gave way to a cry of despair as Karen fell to her knees and wailed.

And Rachel had no idea what to do.

For several minutes Karen was there, curling up into herself and mumbling desperate pleas to God, mumbling apologies to people Rachel didn't know, begging for anyone to save her. And as she did, she saw the hastily wrapped bandages around her shoulder begin to slip off.

Reddish, almost burnt looking mutated flesh underneath, covered with boils. And it seemed to be spreading, the cancerous coloration steadily creeping its way upwards towards her neck.

She had seen how rapidly the mutations could manifest. On Brock, on Julie. She touched at her own patch of bandages on her arm. It was long ineffective by this point, still covering it only so that she could at least have the perception that it was merely a recovering injury and not an irreversible mutation, that in was manageable, that everything was under control.

She hadn't looked at what lay under her own bandages in… how long was it now? Mere hours? A day? Days?

In any case Karen was doomed and so was she.

She didn't know what was going to happen to Karen next. Further mutations, yes. Death? Living assimilation into the biomass of the bloom?

She wasn't sure if she wanted to stay and find out.

So she decided not to.

Karen continued to despair, lost in her own world and oblivious to the outside as Rachel turned around and ventured deeper into the abyss.

###

Snow fell from the sky.

Or perhaps it was ash.

Maybe it even something else entirely. But she couldn't feel cold. Perhaps that was because it wasn't snow, or perhaps it was because she couldn't feel the cold anymore despite wearing little more than a tattered uniform and a tank top by this point. She supposed it was something she should have been caring about, that despite her surroundings her body heat was unusually high and she couldn't feel the typical symptoms of a fever, but she was long past caring by this point.

But she was stood on the trail of the mountain, close to the peak, and from her vantage point she could see across the entire northern side of the island.

And within her sights was the resort.

The ski resort was unremarkable from the outside, just a large plank cabin with no signs of damage and deterioration. Adjacent to it was a diner, a toolshed, what seemed like a few bungalows. All looked abandoned.

Somewhere, somehow, this would lead to where the Garden was, and where the answers lay.

She limped her away up to the main lodge building, panting and drawing out as much energy as she still had. The flakes of white stuff drifting from the sky vanished upon contact with so much as anything solid, leaving nothing behind for her to observe and making it doubtful whether it was even snow in the first place. The wind's howls were like that of an approaching monster.

The lodge that had appeared to be a simple cabin from a fair distance but as she came closer it seemed to grow larger with each passing step, becoming what appeared to her as an enormous mansion more comparable to a hotel than a mere cabin. When she opened the doors she blinked.

The interior of the building was remarkably clean, no signs of dirt or decay. Some sections of the walls were covered in wallpaper with a strange geometric design, with not an inch of it seemingly deteriorating or peeling off. The furnishings were in place, and neatly arranged. The entire building was even alit in a soft warm glow from the grand chandeliers that overlooked the main hall, power somehow still running to this place. What she was seeing gave off the impression that the lodge had only been recently vacated.

The feeling that passed over her was an unsettling shudder. After all the things she had seen, a very clean-looking building was out of place in all the wrong ways.

Slowly she explored, entering rooms and scouring them for clues, or anything. Most of the building was the same as she had seen in the main hall, intact furnishings and clean rooms, lights that still ran. She couldn't hear anything that indicated life in the lodge, didn't encounter signs of monsters or monsters themselves.

Aside from the creakings of the walls and internal piping as they expanded and contracted, the building was dead silent, the only other noises being those of her footsteps, and her own breaths.

The fact that she was alone, in a massive house with no obvious signs of danger anywhere was setting off everything on her paranoia. But slowly it was becoming clear that not everything was right with the lodge. There were individual rooms which were filthy and stained with rust, growths of the bloom, certain places where she saw bloodstains that clearly indicated something violent had happened in this lodge. But whatever had happened had happened long ago, as the blood was long dried.

She was walking down a dim corridor where some fixture overhead was casting strange shadows on the floor when she first felt it, a feeling down the back of her neck that she was being watched. When she turned around she thought she saw the barest glimpse of something darting across the hall, its footfalls, if it was actually real, not making a noise. Whatever the shadow was, it had been roughly humanoid in shape.

Whether it was her mind playing tricks on her, a hallucination of the bloom or an actual threat, she didn't know. Both were equally possible and trying to pursue it was a futile task, for the layout of the lodge was confusing, like a maze. Some rooms led to nowhere, there were corridors and staircases that terminated in dead ends, some halls that looped around back to previous rooms for no apparent reason. In one surreal moment she had found herself in a hall of mirrors, distorted and monstrous reflections of herself everywhere, as if she had stepped into a carnival and not a ski lodge.

To chase the thing down would almost certainly make her lose herself.

Ignoring it, as mad as it sounded, was the best thing she could do in her current situation.

As she explored more and more of the lodge she became unhappily aware there was very little she was making in terms of progress. She hadn't found any scientific or military documents, and as confusing as the architecture of the building was she couldn't find signs of secret rooms or passageways, anything that might indicate an entrance to a hypothetical laboratory.

She found herself in a bathroom, dark and dingy and layered with foul fungal stuff. One of the few rooms that appeared in line with the kinds of places she'd been to on this island. The tap basin was layered with a mat of black mold and when she turned it on the water that came out was completely black, and filled the bathroom with an awful stench as it quickly overflowed the basin.

Not that she cared much. She remained stood in front of the mirror even as the thick, foul liquid pooled under her feet.

The bandages she had wrapped around her arm were wet and translucent. They were soaked with enough liquid that they were outright disintegrating by this point. Her eyes were absolutely blood red.

The weaves of pale white fungus seemed to have grown. Spread wider across her tissue. The epicenter of it where it all bloomed from seemed to be growing additional plates, hardening as the color became a bloody mud-orange. The rest of the flesh around it was as disfigured and mutated as before, the discolorations having spread their way upwards to her elbow and down to her wrist and leaving lumpy cysts in their wake, and she forced herself to look at it even as she wanted to turn away. Staring right into the patch of flesh on her arm forced her to acknowledge the problem.

She didn't have a lot of time left. Not as herself.

The hallways seemed to be blending into each other, looping endlessly over and over and leaving nothing but a growing sense of madness in her mind. Her investigation, as thorough as she tried to be, was going absolutely nowhere. There weren't any answers she was going to find in this lodge but the time it took for her to accept that was too long.

At long last after god-knows how long she spent trying to find her way out, she was back at the main hall and leaving the building and never before had she been so glad to leave a place. The bungalows were boarded up on both their doors and windows, but much like the main lodge when she peered inside it appeared far too clean for this place. Prying off the planks would take too long, so she decided to search the diner first.

Unlike the eerily well-kept lodge the diner was in relative disarray. It was clear it had been untouched for a long time, dust had caked all over the furniture and some chairs had topped over, and the paint was peeling off, but otherwise there were no signs of bad damage. Patches of the floor were covered in broken glass, shards of long-ago shattered plates that made loud crunches each other her foot stepped over them.

If there was one similarity the diner held with the lodge, it was the presence of a lit lantern sitting atop one of the booths. She wondered for a moment who had placed it there and when, before realizing she would likely never know the answer.

There was nothing much of interest in the main room of the diner, aside from maybe the chainsaw that she found sitting in a cabinet for some reason. Much like in most of the lodge there were no signs of combat or monsters.

It was in a small storage room, far to the back of the decrepit kitchen, where she finally discovered something.

A construction-style floodlight, still powered, illuminated a room where clearly some recent additions had been made, long after the original abandonment of the resort.

Vials containing stuff she couldn't recognize sat atop the shelf, and there were bits of advanced machinery strewn everywhere. Military canvas bags here and there, even a modern laptop that had its cords haphazardly twisted around the delicate equipment. A large, open briefcase, the kind she recognized as being used to store objects in cold storage. There were still sample vials sitting inside of it.

This was a homebrew laboratory.

Immediately she went about, carefully looking over everything she saw and making sure not to lose a single detail. The main things that were her focus of attention were the briefcase, the laptop, and the machine that sat adjacent to it. There were four vials placed within the briefcase, each one a small glass vial that held some kind of tissue sample inside. The labels were handwritten, 'DS1', 'CR6', 'DS7' and 'EEX'. She had no idea what they stood for, but judging by the nature of the laboratory they were more than likely samples taken by others who had been on the island before, marked before they were to be transported away.

Unfortunately the samples had to be long past viability by now, having been sitting inside an opened freeze storage case that hadn't been powered for a long time. They could still be of use in a conventional laboratory but she was long past that luxury now.

The machine was, on closer inspection, some kind of storage case as well, but it was not one that she could open with her bare hands alone. The power cord connecting it to the laptop clearly indicated it could only be opened through electronic means – and much to her surprise, the laptop still had battery power.

She was greeted by some kind of strange logo she hadn't seen before as she booted the machine up, that looked almost like two snakes entwined in a way that formed the shape of a four-leaf clover.

A quick look at the desktop revealed very little, however, beyond the default programs that had been installed by the laptop manufacturer. It was only when she looked through the single encrypted folder hidden through the laptop's files that she found out more.

Even then the encrypted folder was spartan, not the archives of research data she had wanted. It seemed that whoever used the laptop was so secretive about the data on it that only the barest necessary information was stored on it in case of theft or espionage. The only other explanation she could think of, was that the laptop's owner had erased whatever incriminating data was on it.

There were only two files in the encrypted folder. The first was a video, apparently made on October of 2012. The second was an executable to unlock the electronic case. This was the one the clicked on first.

Almost instantly, the lid of the case opened with a hiss. Gas smoked out of the case.

She blinked.

Sitting within the case, secured in what looked like some kind of retractable metal platform, was a single large syringe, the material thick and metallic, the printed biohazard symbol not hard to miss. Cautiously, she reached out and pulled the vial out of the case. Through a rectangular pane of glass she could see that inside was a murky fluid, almost milky in its composition, and when she flicked a switch a needle extended out the other end of the syringe for injection.

Was this the bloom in its rawest form?

Was the material swishing innocuously within the syringe the same stuff that now flowed through her veins? The same stuff that corrupted entire rooms, distorted and warped the bodies and minds of her friends, allies, animals that had attacked her?

She watched the video.

Recognized the room she saw. It was the same room she was in right now. A webcam recording.

She didn't recognize the man in the video, thin and sallow-thinking with a slight mustache.

He was covered in sweat, eyes nervously flitting about. Whatever was happening, he was very afraid of it.

"_I…_" he began, only to lose his nerve and look down at his feet, panting and taking deep breaths.

"_I don't know if I can do this. Our mission is to secure raw material for the organization's bioweapons R&D department, that much I know. And we have succeeded where others have failed for years. But I now have serious reconsiderations about what I have to do._"

He stopped again. Caught his breath.

Compared to what she had seen of the others who previously been on this island, he seemed remarkably lucid. He was very frightened, yes, but otherwise he seemed to be aware of himself and not lost in the delusions and madness that seemed to have befallen everyone else.

"_The National Security Adviser is a powerful man. He can easily make my family disappear if he knows I deliberately fail this mission. But with what I've seen of the Diamond Blossom project, what I've seen happen to my friends and comrades, I know that I must fail this mission. Beyond that, I must make it impossible for future missions to succeed._"

From out of the video, he lifted up a large, familiar syringe. Eyed it nervously.

"_We fabricated this using the equipment we were provided with, before… before our team was reduced to one. This… is a mycetotoxic compound._"

An involuntary gasp of pain, from somewhere on his body.

"_In theory, it is supposed to act as a safeguard against the bloom. It will poison infected tissue, set them on a path to cellular decay that would lead to cellular instability, and then – self destruction. We thought it would be an effective vaccine. But the bloom is stronger than that. Far too strong. The mycetotoxin failed as a safeguard._"

He sniffled. Clearly holding back his sadness at the acknowledgement that he was doomed.

"_But it has another purpose, beyond a vaccine that doesn't work. The mycetotoxin will kill anything that has already been tainted by the bloom. But not immediately. There is a window of time as the cells slowly decay, the gene structure is destroyed, and the organs fail. By all accounts, a slow painful death. But not a lot of us get to know how long we have before we die. I do, and I intend to use it._"

Deep breaths. Readying himself for what to say next.

"_I will return… to the belly of the beast. There is an old lab under the lodge, and there's another facility connected to it. That's where I'll find the heart. There is an intelligence behind the bloom's growth." _

"_The Heart of the bloom, somewhere deep beneath us. It's not human in origin. It's something inhuman. And everything that has been touched by the bloom's poison, I believe, is connected back to it. If the bloom was anything like a normal fungus the whole island would have been consumed years ago, but it's not. There is a mind that directs and influences what the biomass does. And if I can poison that mind itself with the mycetotoxin… maybe, just maybe, I can stop this. Put an end to the madness that consumes everybody who comes here._"

And he raised the needle above his wrist.

"_I don't know what I will face when I'm in the heart. The heart… the heart consumes everything in its reach endlessly. I won't have a chance to directly inject its biomass with the toxin. The only reliable way I can think of to kill the thing… is to let it consume me, while I've been poisoned by the toxin._"

And he plunged the syringe into himself, injected the contents.

When it was done he turned a shade paler, leaned back and let out a breath he had been holding.

"_It's done. I'm dead anyway. Might as well take the thing down with me. And I know… I know I might not make it to the heart. That's why I'm recording myself talking now, aren't I? I've fabricated another vial of the mycetotoxin in this case. If anybody comes across this, and the heart is still kicking – and you will know if it's still alive - you know what you have to do. Mary, kids… I love you._" 

###

For several minutes she just sat there, staring at the syringe that sat in her palms.

It was fairly obvious that the mysterious man had failed in his quest. His confession had been recorded years ago and even after that countless men and women had still been sent here by the party that the then-National Security Advisor had been involved with, sent here to go mad and die.

The knowledge that there was an intelligence that governed the bloom troubled her deeply, mostly because the notion that there was a sapient mind directing the growths and the mutations didn't align with what she had seen of the bloom. A random corruption that twisted what it touched in ways that could not be predicted, and were not alike with each other.

But what if there was still indeed a mind behind everything?

What if the man was right? That killing this heart, as he called it, could put an end to the threat the bloom presented? She had no way of knowing what destroying the hypothetical intelligence could do.

For all she knew it would be a pointless endeavor, the bloom would only continue to grow and corrupt and consume.

But on the other hand, on the chance that he was right, if the intelligence died then the bloom would die along with it.

Even if it was only a very slim, hypothetical chance, she had a chance to do something good for once, when she'd been selfish her whole life.

She looked down at the state of her arm. She still had five fingers, a roughly human hand, but the mutations had now spread to completely encompass her arm, blisters and discolorations covering her palms and fingers now. The festering mutations that, soon, were going to completely consume her body. She was going to die anyway. There wasn't anything else that could save her. She might as well make sure the evil could not touch anybody else after her.

It was at this moment that she finally made the decision to inject herself with the mycetotoxin.

Despite how long she hesitated and contemplated her decision it was over in a moment.

It was done.

A muscle in her mutated arm involuntarily twitched, as if it was already feeling the effects of the poison that now flowed through her veins, and she took a deep breath.

She would pick up from where the man had left off. Locate and destroy the heart of the bloom, with what little time she had left.

###

Something had changed when she returned to the main diner. She couldn't tell what it was, but there was an off feeling about it.

The door was hanging slightly open, when she had closed it when she came inside.

She could see additional footprints that overlapped with her own.

Narrowing her eyes, she gazed around the diner. Nothing seemed particularly suspicious about the room, and she could hear nothing out of the ordinary.

Her hand gravitated to the pistol on her belt. She had no idea what kind of monstrosity she was going to encounter and it was unlikely that the handgun could do much of anything in the way of serious damage, but as long as it could stun and distract the monster…

Several seconds passed as she just stood there, waiting for an attack to come.

Nothing happened.

As cautiously as she could, she started to take steps forward. The half-open door was just some feet away from her.

Another step forward.

A little bit more…

Then suddenly, footsteps from behind her.

She spun around to see Karen Lansing stepping up to her, slightly hunched and gripping a large pipe wrench in her hand.

"Hey there, Rachel."

Her voice was a low, dangerous growl.

She shot the psychologist in the stomach and at point-blank range the bullet should have killed her, but Karen showed no reaction whatsoever to being shot before she swung her weapon and the wrench slammed into Rachel's skull.

0o0

Only a few minutes must have passed, but she was stunned and disoriented and in that brief window of time it felt like hours had gone by even though it was only an instant.

She curled over as Karen kicked her in the stomach, then in the ribs, then she felt her rifling through her pockets before feeling the grip of her pistol being slipped away.

Then she was being hauled up to her feet, Karen gripping her by the neck, and it felt strange as she felt herself feeling like her feet was hanging above the ground. Had Karen become taller than she was?

"You're actually pretty devious, aren't you Rachel? Had us all by the neck and we didn't even notice a thing as we got led on your suicide run."

And she was thrown against the wall, steep pans and glass bottles send shattering all over. She groaned, rubbed where her wounds ached as Karen cackled, the manic laugh of a woman whose sanity had been broken beyond repair.

"I can't believe I was led along like a fool all this time! You're a manipulator, you know that?! A goddamn puppet-master!"

"We can talk this over, Karen!" she cried out, scrabbling along the ground to look for a weapon, any weapon. Her hand grabbed onto a beer bottle before she felt surprisingly strong hands grab her by the hair and pull her up.

Karen leaned down, looking her directly in the eye.

The expression on her face was a paradox, her lips pulled into a crazed animalistic grin, while her eyes spoke a different story – soft, wide with fear, and leaking tears. She looked desperate, miserable if one were to look at her eyes alone.

Tears that were trails of black slime.

"I got the impression you'd deemed me a lost cause when you abandoned me. And I cried. How couldn't I? But when I rubbed at my eyes it weren't tears that came out. It was some vile horrible stuff, black like oil. And when I look under my skin, I can see things moving. Worms crawling under my skin. What do you think's happening to me?"

She didn't answer. She didn't need to. Why answer the obvious when the evidence was in plain sight of what was happening to Karen?

The beer bottle smashed into her head and a surprisingly visceral scream erupted from Karen's throat, and as she thrashed and flailed Rachel scrabbled on the ground, crawling across shards of broken glass before she stumbled onto her feet to run for the door.

A series of furious cries preceded the weight that smashed into her back, knocking her back on her feet. She looked up with bleary eyes to see Karen walking over to the door and shutting it close. Then with her bare hands, she twisted the metal handles into a knot that was impossible to undo.

With a crazed grin grabbed the fire axe that hung by the door.

"Help me, Rachel. I'm turning into a monster. Why can't you stay with me?" The moan of distress was weak and pathetic, despite the murderous glint that was otherwise spread across her face as she glared down upon the scientist. Rachel slowly began to crawl backwards. She was shaking in fear, even when her hands patted around her belt for something, anything, and her fingers wrapped around the hilt of what she recognized as her survival knife. How had her fractured psyche even caused her to forget about her knife?

A mere knife was not going to be enough but she had to make do.

Yes, Karen was definitely taller than she was now, parts of her body torn at the skin and dripping blood from failing to contain the sudden growths of bone and muscle. Bursts of hardened fungal growth had erupted here and there too, seemingly at random.

Her left arm reached up to scratch at her left, the same place where Rachel had witnessed her arm begin to mutate, and now she could see that the mutation had developed into a rather large, disturbing bulge of roughly spherical tissue. As she apparently scratched at the growth with a quickening fervor, Karen suddenly threw her head back and screamed in pain.

The flesh was red, raw and angry, the veins bulging. And without warning a massive eyeball suddenly ripped open in the flesh with a spray of blood, fist-sized and just as inflamed as the limb it sprouted from. The organ pulsated and rolled around in its socket with a frantic mania.

"Ahh…" she exhaled, seemingly feeling far less pain or terror than she should. After the violent transformation she almost seemed elated that the moment was over, even though there are undoubtedly far more to come.

"That feels different," she murmured, blinking repeatedly before slamming her axe into the floor twice like a challenge, either to intimidate Rachel or to psyche herself up.

"You're a lying bitch. A manipulator who left me to turn into something else... alone. And you deserve to die." And she burst into a bout of manic laughter.

"I can't believe I thought you were one of the good ones!" she cackled.

"You're not thinking straight, Karen! Stop and listen to me! The bloom is messing with your mind!"

Rather that calming Karen down her ill-worded argument caused Karen to shriek in rage.

Rachel ducked, the swung axe missing her head by mere inches. The strength was such that it smashed through the wood counters and knocked over the lantern which had been illuminating the front. Flames burst out from the glass, and in the dry wood of the abandoned diner, the sparks quickly began to spread. Karen looked down at her feet, taking note of the shattered lantern and the fire that now burned from it, while Rachel quickly scrambled away to take cover behind one of the counters.

She sat up and leaned against the wood, holding the knife against her chest and panting in exhilaration and fear.

It was just a small ember now, but with the rotten wood that made up the diner they were in Rachel realized it was only a matter of time before they would be in a room engulfed in flames.

Footsteps were crunching somewhere around her.

She didn't cry out for Karen to stop or think about her actions, it was clear now that nothing could convince the mutated psychologist to spare her and she had every intention of nothing less than bloody murder. Whether she wanted to or not, fighting back was the only option there was left.

She could hear her stalking around. Hunting her.

"Rachel…" she sing-songed. "I know you're close. Come out, you little rat. Come out…"

A little rat. That couldn't be further from the truth. After all she was now playing a terrifying game of cat-and-rat, creeping from counter to counter, table to table, trying to determine where Karen was while not being seen herself. She could hear little quiet breaths and pants, footsteps as Karen stalked around, but no sound she made was loud enough to discern from the ambience of the diner.

And the cracking of the flames, their golden light lending an eerie glow to the diamond dust of the bloom.

During her initial exploration of the diner she had not found a back door so that ruled out a direct escape route. There was no way she was going to get the front door open as it was, let alone without Karen noticing her or the fire getting to her first. There was the chainsaw to consider as a tool to cut it open, but such a tool just couldn't be used for a speedy escape.

Could she get out through the windows?

It was certainly worth a try, except that even if she attempted such an escape it was all but certain that Karen would see her and kill her first before she could clamber her way out of a window.

No, she had to deal with Karen first before thinking of a way to escape the burning diner. Her fingers found themselves clenching the knife tighter.

Could she try to make for the chainsaw and use that to fight her?

No, too many risks and unknown factors. For all she knew she'd just get Karen's attention before finding out the chainsaw was out of fuel or something. And the chainsaw was too heavy, too unwieldy. She couldn't risk it.

She winced as her foot stepped down on a pile of broken plates.

"I heard that!" Karen shouted from somewhere further ahead.

Then she heard it, a hideous screeching noise, Karen dragging her axe across the metal and the wood of the floor.

Now that she approximately knew where Rachel was Karen wasn't doing very well in hiding herself. Her labored panting was louder now, as were her stomps across the floor. Her feet crunched on glass and plates, and Rachel slipped by the table counter as she heard Karen walk past right next to her in the opposite direction.

She peeked up to see Karen, her back turned as she investigated where she heard Rachel. The top she was wearing was ripped at the arms and waist, as if she needed anymore visual confirmation that her body had grown taller. There was a disturbingly cancerous-looking bulge on the top of her back, almost the size of a grapefruit.

She hadn't seen her yet.

This was Rachel's chance.

She vaulted over the counter and made her way to Karen, knife drawn. There was no way of telling how lethal a series of stabs to the back would be now for a mutated human with superhuman strength, but there was only one way to find out.

Just before she struck Karen suddenly turned around with a low growl, but it was far too late to prevent the attack.

She thrust the knife upwards, straight into the heart. The blade connected with flesh, and she twisted before ripping it out. A strike like that should have been fatal and Karen screamed, yet she still had enough strength to fight back, swinging her fists and punching Rachel hard in the stomach. Rachel gasped and was forced to let go.

Karen looked down at the blood seeping from her chest wound. One of her hands touched the blood, rubbed her fingers all over. She looked surprised that she was even bleeding. Or that she was still alive. The oversized yet uncannily human-like eyeball on her arm blinked and rolled around madly.

And she began to laugh.

"Oh Rachel, Rachel Rachel Rachel. A rat caught in a trap…"

Burning support beams collapsed between the two of them, giving Rachel time to make a short dash back to safety. She glanced back to see Karen push through the burning wood with her bare hands, dropping the axe as she did so. From her belt she pulled out a long, wickedly sharp machete.

"I bet what you want to do more than anything else, is to cut me open, that right?! To see what makes me tick?!" she shouted.

She didn't reply, just kept her senses high to feel for where Karen was.

She also knew there was a part of Karen that was right, even if the thought of her being that way seemed to grow more and more distant, becoming foggier in her mind.

"What will I find if I cut you open, hmm?" she taunted. "I think it's time we turn the tables and let me study what makes you so special. Think of the possibilities. I bet you haven't really had a good look at yourself in the mirror for a long time, have you? Or maybe you have… and your mind's just not telling you the right thing. I tell you, you're a sight to behold. Then maybe… maybe you'll know what it's like to be treated like a rat in a lab."

A burning cabinet crumbled near her, the embers missing by inches. When she looked around she saw flames everywhere.

"Knowledge is what drives you! I know, because I can think like you! I've experienced how your mind works. It's addicting, isn't it?"

Rachel heard a mocking slurp. Karen smacking her lips.

"That lust for knowledge is almost like a narcotic. You love it so much, knowledge for knowledge's sake, that you're willing to do anything to chase it even if it means playing fools like puppets and dragging good people through hell. You ever thought of Mike? Arcady? Me?"

Somehow she could still hear her voice clearly even though it wasn't shouted, it was delivered low and laced with such venomous hatred. She wasn't even sure if Karen had actually spoken the words or if Rachel simply heard them in her head.

She leapt over a counter, peeked up to try to see where Karen was. It had become far more difficult to detect her. The crackling noises of the fire, and the fact that Karen was far more silent now that she herself seemed to be crouched and stalking around the diner with a comparatively silent weapon.

"Hell, you don't even give a shit about your own brother. What else could I expect of you?"

She panted, wiped sweat off her forehead.

It was getting very hot in the diner. Soon it would be too hot. Hot enough to kill her, if the smoke inhalation didn't get to her first. The walls were on fire, too. Everywhere was on fire.

The heat and the smoke had left her in a daze and unable to respond immediately when Karen's form suddenly walked forth through the blaze towards her in an unflinching stride, the machete gripped in her hand and eyeball wide open.

"There you are," she growled before she charged and swung her machete into the side of her stomach.

Surprisingly getting chopped with a machete didn't hurt as much as she expected it to, maybe because of the adrenaline, or maybe because of whatever mutations she had experienced. But the blood still poured out of her as she struggled, stabbed Karen in the stomach in turn. Gushes of blood poured out but none of it seemed to be doing a damn thing.

Then Karen tackled Rachel to the ground and her knife fell out of her grasp. Before she knew it strong hands were clasped around her neck. She was choking.

Her free hands slapped and scrabbled at the floor, trying to reach her knife…

"Don't fight it," Karen leaned down to whisper in a tone that could almost be considered soothing. "You have no idea what I've done to myself. I must relieve myself of this pain. Please, just let me do it. Give in. Bring some ease into my heart, so I know I've done the right thing…"

She grabbed the knife.

Stabbed it into the third eye.

She fell back screaming, and as she did Rachel grabbed at her machete and swung it into her neck.

And she took it out and swung again.

Again, and again and again, she wildly hacked away at Karen Lansing.

The initial panicked attack giving way to primal screams as she killed her enemy.

Blood stained her hands, splattered on her face.

When it was over she leaned back and howled into the air, her mind blanking over as the fire consumed everything.


	15. The Descent

**The Descent**

One of the things she found herself becoming alarmingly used to, despite everything, was the gaps in memory and skips forward in time. She would appear somewhere, with no recollection of how she got there in the first place. She'd have a vague idea of why she was there and what her destination was – but as to the how of the thing, nothing could come to her mind.

The last thing she could recall was standing over Karen's dead body in the burning diner and now…

Well, she didn't know how she got out. What few bits she could see were fluid and hazy, unable to ascertain as to whether they were hallucinations or reality.

Clambering out of… something. A hole in a door, perhaps. Or a broken window. Either way provided escape.

Looking at herself in a mirror. Skin bared, her clothes were filthy.

Slowly, painfully plucking a hard, thorny, bristly black thing from her back, the way it looked and felt reminding her of a bird's quill…

Neither did she know how she got here.

Not that it made a lick of difference in the end.

The lodge was radically different from when she had last left it.

Dark and decrepit and rotting, water leaking from the roof and flooding the building up to her ankles. Ancient bloodstains everywhere, signs of carnage.

Perhaps it had been like that all along. It was its true form and she simply could not see it until now.

There was a hole in a wall.

Voices crept out from deep within the chasm, whispering secrets.

Some of the voices, she recognized.

The hole was not small, but it was not large either. It was a tight fit, easy enough for a grown woman to squeeze through.

So that was what she did.

Flashlight gripped in her hand she clambered forth, squeezed through the narrow canal.

It was hot and musky and stank of things she didn't even want to think about.

The walls were soft, almost fleshy to the touch.

On and on and on – she crawled.

###

Crawling downwards, deeper and deeper beneath the island she went. Into the belly of the beast.

The air felt moist, her fingers felt subtle, rhythmic vibrations when she laid them upon the walls, and all the time she felt she was descending into something that was alive.

Breathing, almost.

It was something she found exceedingly funny.

Crackling static.

"Hello?"

"_Hey there, Rachel._"

"…Marcus?"

"_You shouldn't be here._"

The signal was unusually clear. Despite the fact she was god-knows how far deep underground. Maybe miles underground if that… elevator… had been going down for as long as…

An elevator?

"Is this really you? How do I know I'm not losing my mind? That you're not just some… figment of my imagination?"

"_You know me, Rachel. There's nothing I have to do to prove myself._"

She was laughing to herself. God, she really was going insane and she was aware of every second of it.

"No. No, no, no, no. My brain's made you up so I've got someone to talk to. Because I've got nobody left. The last one I chopped a machete into her head so that's one strike out."

"_It wasn't your fault. None of this is._"

"Don't you be trying to lift the guilt off me. I know what I did. You're just a part of my subconscious, so you know it as well as I do. My brain's telling me I need to talk to someone so it took a part of myself and made it sound like you. Because if I don't, I'll have lost my mind to the bloom."

A silence for some time. As if the hallucination was trying to think of how it should phrase its next words.

That's what it was. Hallucinations. Just ignore them.

"_They sent you in, didn't they?_"

"I made the choice myself."

"_Through coercion. Dangling the possibility of saving me… and of course, scientific discoveries. You know what they said to me to bring me in?_"

"Tell me."

"_Not a manipulation. They told us that our unit, we were needed for this black op here. Duty calls. That's it. Even some shadow government conspiracy needs only be simple every once in a while._"

She turned some valves on a rusted grate fence.

"And you just went with it."

"_I'm a loyal soldier. It's just who I am. Can you blame me? Government asks me to shoot something, I ask if they want it lethal or non-lethal. Doesn't matter if they're a conspiracy or not._"

"Who are these assholes anyway?"

"_They call themselves the Family. You know the C-Virus? They were the ones who made it._"

"How'd you figure that one out?"

"_Sister, I'm in a room in the deepest bowels of the facility. There's power, enough of it anyway. Oxygen hasn't run out yet so I'm still breathing. And I've got a computer with access to some incriminating databanks that'd make something like Terragrigia look like a mayorly infidelity scandal, if only there was a way to release it to the world wide web._"

"…Is it possible for you to leave?"

"…_No._"

###

She found herself slumping backwards onto her ass, fighting off exhaustion. How long had it been since she'd gotten some sleep? Days? Weeks? She didn't have memories of getting true rest since….

Since the first day?

Her mind in something of a delirium, she pulled out her journal to make a record of the events she could remember thus far.

When she opened it and flipped through its pages all she could do stare.

The first page – and the first page alone – was something she could comprehend. It documented what she could recall of the first day on the island in detail, covering the other day she woke up without memories until the end of that.

What followed was increasingly incoherent scrabbling, sentences scrawled across each other, words repeating endlessly over and over. Childish doodles combined with writing that failed to discuss anything that had to do with the island, ranting about food and family and friends and love unrequited, monsters in her head and people she couldn't hear.

The entire journal was ruined. It was little more than a book containing the thoughts of a woman who had descended into madness and simply hadn't realized it yet.

The radio was silent.

She remembered climbing into a hole, crawling deeper into the bowels of the island.

Searching for the Garden, the lab where all this started.

Her brother! A conversation with Marcus through the radio! It was…

She looked down at the radio with disappointment. More than likely she was simply talking to herself but…

A part of her did hope – wish – that it actually was real.

Then… what? There was a gap in her memory where she couldn't recall anything at all. It was just like the gaps of memory during the first few days on the island.

Anything could happened in that gap. Time could have sped by without her realizing it, trapped in a blissful nightmare.

She shuddered. Opened and closed her fists.

Thinking about what further mutations she had possibly gone through, or could have gone through if she been ensnared in the mental fog that was now her mind even further There was nothing much she could do in self-inspection, not when she couldn't cut herself open to observe the internal mutations.

It was only on further movement that she realized she was standing in cold water that went up to her waist, and the entire room she was in was seemingly enclosed by the moving fungal flesh with only a single corridor that led out. The air was dank, smelled like something had died and rotted away into the water. Considering the state of the room it was more likely that was precisely what happened. She wrinkled her nose in disgust. Started to wade towards the corridor.

Which was precisely when the corpse floated across her path, confirming her suspicion. Though still maintaining a human shape it was heavily scarred and deformed from mutations, not to mention decomposed.

Despite the filth of it all she still brought herself to search the body for anything, as she realized the P226 wasn't on her holster, and with the complete memory lapse there was essentially no chance of her recovering the gun again. The survival knife was still on her, though it wouldn't help much. Unfortunately, the corpse didn't yield any weapons she could use, no tools too.

She would have to proceed practically naked and she wasn't happy about it. She searched around for her flashlight, hoping at least she would have that, and was glad when she felt the familiar tool still tucked on her belt.

The ray of illumination it produced revealed exactly what she thought she'd see, the layers of pink and orange flesh that covered over rock and concrete.

Even with the aid of a flashlight in a dark underground she was completely unaware of what environment she was even in she would essentially be blind going forward.

The ray flickered several times. Its power grew dim. It must be running low on battery power, either that or some part of it had been damaged, but either way it provided her now with far less light than she felt comfortable with.

Still. She could do this.

The tunnels ahead of her dripped with water, creaks, somewhere in some direction in the distances she heard strange moaning sounds, monsters perhaps. It made her even more worried about her lack of viable weapons. Being as unarmed as she was she would need the darkness to hide from whatever threats she could face because with how deep the water was she wouldn't be able to run very far.

She was wading through water, knee-high deep, with only her hands feeling along the walls to guide her way. It was a disgusting process, almost every touch led to something warm and wet and slippery that quivered at her touch, and it wasn't until her fingers latched onto cold rusted metal that she realized there was a network of pipes in the tunnels, and she could follow those to navigate out of wherever she was.

At several points she found herself leaning as tight as she could against the walls of flesh and staying very still, for she heard… something wading around in the waters ahead of her. There wasn't anything she could see, only what she could hear, and it was some kind of gurgling, moaning noise.

The loudness of the splashes it made could only hint at the size of the thing, and it wasn't something she wanted to face with only a knife.

So for minutes on end she would hide, pressing herself against the disgusting walls until the noises stopped, and the monsters had gone far away enough for her to be comfortable.

There were more floating, badly decomposed corpses as she went her way, which didn't answer any of the questions she had.

Clearly this place was manmade, the occasional emergency lights and the piping attested to that, but what purpose did it serve? Was this what she had been looking for? The Garden?

Occasionally she would stumble into a cave-in, piles of concrete blocking her path, and then she would have to retrace her steps and try to find a new passage to go through. Every time she did so she prayed she wouldn't inadvertently bump into the unseen monster head-on.

She never did.

After what must have been an hour of blindly feeling around the labyrinth of tunnels she found her feet stepping onto a flight of stairs, emerging out of the dank water. There were more lights ahead of her as well, illuminating the path ahead.

The concrete wall ahead of her was emblazoned with something she didn't expect. The symbol of the Soviet red star was waiting for her, the paint aged enough for it to begin fading. Cyrillic lettering she couldn't read, possibly instructions or a slogan of some sort, were written next to it.

Learning that the Soviet Union were involved in this operation at some point, in some way, was something big. Just how old was this laboratory?

The metal and glass doors seemed almost rusted shut from apparent decades of disuse.

She groaned as she rammed herself against it, pounded on the door several times until unexpectedly, one hard bodily shove caused the door to cave in, allowing her access. She blinked at that in surprise.

How much raw strength did she really possess?

With everything from malnourishment to her physical deterioration as the infection ravaged her body, she should be no stronger than a drunken bum on the street. Yet she just displayed enough strength to bust a metal door open with her bare hands.

It was an effect of the bloom, no doubt about it, and it was nowhere near superhuman, but it was yet another reminder she wasn't really herself anymore.

Setting it aside she stepped into the old facility.

Even with the facility's age taken into account it was still not what she had expected, looking at the general state of the lab. She had seen photographic records of what Umbrella's old facilities were like but what she was inside did not fit those standards. It was a tight, cramped series of corridors, leaching to offices with messes of paper and bloom growths on the floors and walls, over the cheap cubicles that once occupied these spaces.

It was strange, aside from the rust and decay, signs of the bloom sprouting everywhere, the lab appeared completely mundane, no different from perhaps one of dozens of overworked, underfunded OKB weapons research facilities one might have found in the old U.S.S.R.

Judging by the nature of the research that was conducted here she had expected a massive operation, a vast facility with multiple levels and wings each filled with the best technology and scientific minds afforded by the Soviet Union, with its own power station even to fuel all of this technology, a secret base in American territory that was guarded by the most advanced security measures and a military presence.

While it was undeniably a large research facility, impressively so considering it was built right under the nose of the United States, it wasn't quite what she expected.

It made her wonder if this truly was the Garden, the codename they made for the elusive facility that was the goal of every ill-fated expedition to this island.

Just old offices and computers that had long ago failed.

She went through the documents as she explored, flitting past the majority of them in search of the ones that mattered.

Ancient notes, data records. She saw charts and graphs, couldn't read any of them as they were all in Cyrillic, but they were definitely experiment documentation, and she could see dates. At the very least, they started this research as far back as 1977, possibly even earlier. It was still astounding to learn. The Soviets had been involved in bio-engineering research in the same field where Umbrella was breaking ground as far back as decades ago?

Hell, considering the infancy of the field and how unlikely it was that the researchers really knew what they were dealing with was it even possible that the project was not actually started with biological weaponry in mind in the first place?

No, that wasn't possible, new fields of science would always begin with its possible applications in warfare. Dynamite, the airplane, the radio, the splitting of the atom. Other, more peaceful uses would only come years afterwards.

She shouldn't have been surprised. She had read before about twisted experiments being conducted behind the Iron Curtain, stories of attempts at creating hybrids of apes and men, dogs with a second transplanted head and dead dogs being artificially revived from the dead, but those were crude, misguided attempts that never came close to splicing the gene in the same way Umbrella had been doing.

But this facility was ancient, everything simply left as it was and unused for decades. The research being conducted clearly never went anywhere, it had to have been abandoned when the U.S.S.R. dissolved and she had never seen anything like the bloom out there in the world. So what happened?

There was something else to the picture here, something she was missing.

Something else troubling her was the distinct lack of corpses in the facility itself. There were no signs of an emergency. When she came across the cafeteria plates and cups were still left out on the tables, covered over with long-ago rotted food like the researchers had simply ceased to exist in the middle of their day. It painted the picture that the Soviets simply packed up and left.

Given the frustrating lack of detail on what she could discover another possibility arose that before they did they made sure to take or destroy their research documentation.

But it was only speculation, with nothing to prove it.

What must have once been the control room of the lab, dominated by a large Cold War computer and rows of consoles yielded only disappointment until she looked through the bottom drawer of a desk in the corner.

There were black-and-white photographs, eerie in what they depicted.

A hole in the ground, like some kind of crater. Another one of the same thing but with someone in a hazard suit crouching down and looking into it, for scale. The hole didn't seem overly large, around the size of a car. But what was it?

Official photos of men and women in lab coats posing for the camera. A Cyrillic caption that she couldn't read.

A man strapped down on a gurney, flanked by two men in lab coats. He was bald, looked like a desiccated corpse. It wasn't clear from the blurry photo, but it looked like massive patches of his skin were sloughing off.

Some kind of… thing. Bent down in a cage that was clearly too cramped. It looked human, the head and torso looked like at least despite the emaciation, but its limbs were unnaturally elongated and thin, almost stick-like, and spread out over the corners of the cage like… something not human.

A particularly disgusting photo of something she shouldn't be surprised by. A skeletal human who was in a jail cell, sitting against a corner and assimilated into the mass of pustulous fungus that had grown around him. She couldn't tell if he was still alive or not but it finally confirmed that this facility was indeed used to study the bloom. Even with all the signs pointing in the right direction, the confirmation was still important.

And there were photos that she couldn't really describe because she really had no idea what they displayed. There were men gathering around something, investigating it maybe, scientific equipment in their hands. She saw a large mass that looked like bloated tumors but the grainy blur and the strange flares of light, almost glittering in how it looked, obscured what she could see.

In nearly all of the ones that weren't taken in the lab itself, that blinding light flare was present.

It could only mean that the film itself was damaged, or…

She didn't know.

There was one strange photo that showed a huge mass of light, like a photo of the sun itself but the something was off about the way the currents and rays rippled, and somewhere in the chaos she saw a vaguely humanlike outline of… someone. Or something.

Strange.

A small library. Most of its shelves knocked over and collapsed spilling the books everywhere.

There was a massive gaping hole in the center of the room. Not anything like the crater she saw in the photo, but the shape of it implied something heavy had simply fallen through, smashing its way through the floor. She peered downwards to see a gaping nothingness.

No, not entirely, there was the movement of water down there.

It could very well be a one-way trip. But she was long past caring.

Her body slackened and she dropped down into the hole.

The liquid was the texture of thick muck, stank of decomposing flesh. And it went up to her waist.

She just pushed forward, having long ago become used to the sight of the walls that moved.

They were all around her, fleshy walls covered with huge cysts that looked like organs onto themselves. They seemed alive too, steadily increasing and decreasing in size with a rhythmic pace as though they were breathing. And either row of the narrow flooded tunnel she found herself in was filled with the stuff. Perhaps it had once been the sewer of the Soviet facility, but with the current condition it was in there was just no longer a way to verify that.

Perhaps she really was literally inside the belly of the beast.

This was what the bloom amounted to, an immense super-organism big enough for humans to run around in like mere bodily parasites.

"_You're gonna wanna be careful down there,_" the radio suddenly crackled to life with Marcus' voice.

"What?" she asked, more to herself than to the radio. There was still a part of her resistant to the idea that Marcus really was alive, and speaking to her. A part of her clinging on to the more rational belief that it was all in her head.

"_Down there in the basement,_" Marcus warned, his tone cautious, "_That's where a lot of the bloom's growth is concentrated. You're gonna find that it might choke a little to breathe in that air so take deep breaths whenever you get the chance, a pocket of oxygen or something. Whole area's built like a maze, too, so keep an eye out for fallback points. Don't use the air vents. Bloom growth's clogged those ducts up._"

For a moment she refused to reply to the voice on the radio. Just continued wading through the river of foul, disturbingly warm water.

Perhaps if she refused to acknowledge the voice it would cease to exist, like the smoke and mirrors it truly was.

"_And watch out for B.O.W.s. The labyrinth's crawling with monsters, three at least. You have a weapon?" _

Just to truly confirm she hadn't hallucinated she checked her pockets in the water. No gun. Survival knife was still there.

"No. Just a knife," she decided to reply.

Maybe it wouldn't hurt once if she replied, if the voice, Marcus, was talking about something she needed to pay attention to.

He sighed as if in mild frustration. "_Okay, we're gonna have to work with that then. Keep your flashlight off if you can help it. Don't draw any attention. Don't even try distracting them by throwing a rock or something like that, it doesn't work, I've seen it backfire with horrible results. Run if you have to, no shame in it. _

She ignored him. Her flashlight flickered.

"_There might still be weapons down there. Keep an eye out for an armory, their Kalashnikovs should still be able to fire._"

Memories of the mutated bear flashed back to the forefront of her mind. It ultimately took a flash grenade jammed into its mouth and a full magazine's worth of assault rifle fire to finish it off, and before that it had shrugged off small arms fire and shotgun blasts like they were nothing. If there was anything like the bear crawling in the depths of this facility…

"What kind of B.O.W.s are we talking about here?" she asked the voice on the radio.

And Marcus went quiet.

Didn't say anything.

She scoffed. More to herself than to the radio.

"Why do I even care?" she snapped to herself. "You're not even real."

It really had come down to this, in the end. She'd turned into a loon in some horrible subterranean labyrinth in the middle of nowhere who was talking to herself, hearing voices and hallucinating the presences of people she knew weren't really there. It'd be a miracle if she wasn't mercy-killed by the next round of sad saps sent here who would see a fully mutated being wandering around babbling to itself and assume it to be a lost cause, yet another monster spawned by the bloom.

And the radio went silent.

After a moment, Marcus was ready to reply.

"_Rachel._"

She got the feeling that he was waiting for her to answer. She almost refused.

"What is it?"

"_I don't care if you don't think I'm real. I don't care if you believe I'm a hallucination. And I don't care if you really believe I'm your brother. All that matters is that I don't want you to die._"

"Of course you wouldn't want me to die," she spat out as she squeezed herself, very uncomfortably so, through a tight crevice between two walls that looked to be alive and breathing. "We already talked this over. You're born out of my imagination. Just a sliver of my conscience, that's all. This is my body's way of telling me how to survive. That or it's the bloom worming its way through my brain."

And she wasn't sure which option was the one she preferred. "You are me," she concluded in a shaky voice.

And even for this the voice, the illusion she believed was Marcus, had an answer.

"_You said it yourself. I'm here to tell you how to survive. Because I will not allow you to die on my watch. And do you want to know why?" _

"_I don't want Maggie to bury two empty caskets._"

She paused for a moment, allowed the implication of what he said to slide past. "_She's got a kid on the way. I don't want her to do that. And I know neither do you,_" he continued, as if taking her silence as permission to continue.

He was right. Marcus, her conscience, her hallucination, whatever the voice was.

As distant as she might have become from her sister – from all in her family – she would never allow Maggie to lose all her siblings now. She loved her too much to let that happen.

The voice was right. She had to push through and overcome all of this. Fight and survive.

Somewhere ahead of her in the dark depths, she heard a course, choking wheezing sound. Whatever the noise originated from it sounded large.

She had come upon some kind of industrial room, large portions of it dominated by machinery. She bent down under some metal grating, leaning as tight as she could. The radio, too, was silent.

The thing that was in the same room as her made some kind of muffled sounding gurgling sound, and then with a series of uneven footsteps, shuffled off deeper into the depths.

"What happened down here?"

"_Hell if I know. Russians came and left. They're the first, you see. As to why they'd abandon their research? Beats me. Could be that the higher-ups just decided it wasn't worth it. Sabotage, maybe, but that doesn't fit the evidence we've seen. Or they thought the bloom didn't really fit into the communist way of life. Maybe the Russians figured mankind shouldn't be messing around with something like the bloom – that'd make it a first_," he remarked with an exceedingly dry chuckle."_But after that…_"

He said nothing else for several minutes and Rachel didn't push him. Not when there was really a need to.

Speculation wasn't the same as facts. None of the hallucination's suggestions could really be taken as fact. That was what she kept telling herself. A mere hallucination couldn't possibly, truly, know things.

Then the voice came back to the radio despite her not asking him anything.

"_I lost a rookie down here. One moment she was with us and next -_"

He didn't have to say much of anything else and neither did she have to.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Perhaps it was simply the sounds echoing down the tight corridors of the dungeon or traveling through the air vents, but she knew her ears were picking up the distant sounds of more creatures further down the labyrinth.

A partially skeletonized corpse prevented her from entering through a metal door until she grabbed it and pulled it away by force. It took some effort, the bloom which have grown over the body had fused it to the door and floor but she was able to remove the majority of the corpse, stripping away most of its upper form, and that was enough for her to proceed. Despite the Cyrillic printed all over the facility and the indications it was built by the U.S.S.R. the corpse was not wearing the uniform of the Red Army, despite clearly having once been a soldier. The remnants of the green uniform and the wrecked rifle pointed to that. If anything he looked more like a modern-day service trooper than anything else.

Yet another question to add to the whole mystery.

The long steel corridor that awaited her was nothing but foreboding, lit only a series of dim lights the shade of a sickly yellowish color.

The radio crackled to life.

"_Listen to me. You're my little sister, right? Rachel Yun? Or as Mom insists on calling you, Sun-hee. You're strong. When you know you want something you won't stop at anything to achieve it. Like the chemistry set you stole when you were twelve, remember?_"

She remembered.

Marcus chuckled from the other end.

"_Gave our parents hell because of it. And because of that I know you can handle this. Remove all the doubt from your mind, because I believe in you._"

Holding back a sniff, she nodded.

"Thank you." And she meant it.

Even if it was only a hallucination the encouragement, and the love for her brother, was still real enough to warrant it.

With only the voice of her brother on the radio for company she proceeded deeper into the labyrinth.


	16. Living Hell

**Living Hell**

She sat still for a moment, bent over slightly. Nothing but soft pants filled the air.

With trembling fingers she pulled open the packaging that was held in her hands. It had felt like eternity since she actually got real food into her mouth and here she was, trying to rip open the ration.

Rachel wasn't sure how she stumbled upon it. Not that she was expecting to find a restaurant in this place that was ready to provide her with food, but finding an intact military-grade ration just lying around down here?

Her thought should have been of wondering who it belonged to, or whether such a meal was still edible after spending an unknown amount of time sitting around in this filthy labyrinth, overgrown with flesh and bloom. But now the only thing she could think of was the raw hunger that clouded her mind.

With the savagery of an animal she tore into the ration's contents.

Powders and gels she consumed within seconds, simply pouring it all down her throat and swallowing it at once. Powdered coffee, fruit punch, all went down the gullet without so much as reaching her taste buds. Same went with the raspberry jam that she squeezed directly into her mouth, and this time she could register a sweet juicy taste. The crackers were unusually hard but her teeth crunched down on it like it was nothing and she chewed them up, swallowed within the blink of an eye.

She didn't need to taste it, not when the primal reaction within her brain driving her survival was telling her that the stuff she was eating was the most delicious meal she had eaten since…

She didn't know how long she had gone without food, couldn't even remember a single instance of eating since arriving on the island. But now that she was doing it the sensations were almost narcotic. There was no need for water or heating because as she opened the packaging of the main course the smell that wafted out was already driving her into a frenzy.

Who cared that it was dried and preserved stuff that should not smell unless it was heated? It smelled delicious and she craved the food more than anything else.

So she dug out the foodstuff with her bare hands, gorging upon it and stuffing handfuls of dried meat into her mouth. The texture was stringy, chewy, extremely delicious, but there was too little of it and within seconds it was all gone and she still didn't feel satisfied.

The blueberry muffin that was the apparent dessert?

Soft and warm like it was freshly baked. And it was gone in an instant.

Feeling satisfied at the first real meal she had yet disappointed that it wasn't the feast she really craved she leaned back and sighed, licked her lips. As short as it lasted it was still a reprieve from the horrors that she had encountered thus far and she was grateful for that.

Something hard was stuck in her teeth and she spit.

Small and tiny it clinked onto the floor. A fragment of bone? Maybe. She'd tore into the ration with such ferocity she didn't even see what it was and she just ate the entire thing without regarding to checking for bones.

That was all it was.

She looked down at her hands.

And stared at them.

It was hard to tell because of the poor lighting conditions, but the fluids staining her hands almost looked crimson red.

Several long, trembling seconds passed as she slowly looked back at the remains of the ration packaging.

It still sat there.

Standard military grade-issue MRE, meal ready-to-eat. A cooked meal designed to last.

She looked back down at her hands and brought them up to her nose.

It smelled coppery. Fresh blood.

She found herself staring at the ration packaging for several long seconds.

What finally brought her moving again was the realization she was wasting time. She had eaten a satisfactory meal that could keep her going and that was that. Time to move on.

###

The harrowing wail was the first thing she heard. It was frightening, a disturbingly loud moan of agony that sounded like that of a woman in pain. Echoing off the sides of the tunnels, she had no idea which direction it came from.

When she concentrated her hearing there were other sounds she could pick up, so soft they could easily have faded into the ambience of the flooded underground ruins if she weren't paying attention. Small, sobbing and crying and groaning was what she heard, all sounding like they came from the same girl. They were eerily humanlike.

"You have any idea as to what that was?" she quietly asked the radio, not expecting a straight answer. "It sounded like a person."

But she knew the chances of that were slim.

The bear still lingered in her mind. The monster that had fused with a friend of hers, wailing and screaming through the voice of her… friend…

Which, to her horror, the name of whom was lost to her.

Even if it wasn't real speaking to the hallucination of Marcus was helping her to maintain her hold on sanity, as paradoxical as it was.

"_I don't know_," Marcus admitted after several moments of silence, though there was a tinge of uncertainty to his voice. "_Watch your six._"

Simple advice, but she understood.

It had been a while since she came upon a diverging path in the labyrinth, the only direction she could proceed in the tunnels of concrete and flesh was forward, and it brought her with the uncomfortable realization that if she stumbled straight into a monster all she could do was turn back and run because she'd be seen immediately.

"_I'll keep myself quiet_," Marcus whispered through the radio. "_Don't you open your mouth, okay? I don't want you to draw attention to yourself. If you absolutely need to, signal me first by tapping. Like this._"

Tap, tap.

She tapped on the radio twice, in response.

And he went silent, just like he promised.

Her pants were absolutely soaked with filth and all she could feel was relief when she was able to step out of the ankle-high fluids onto a pavement of rust grating. Before her were iron doors and as she pushed them open she winced at the high-pitched grating screech of metal against metal.

Somewhere echoing down the tunnels was a sound that could have easily been crying as it could have been a bout of laughter.

She walked down a flight of stairs, each step sending up a light splash of water. The entire area echoed with the sounds of countless drops dripping from the ceiling, and strange subtle sounds that could have been distant moaning. All the while the bloom continued to squelch and squirm.

Somewhere in the area she was going down was a soft, warm orange glow.

When she got close enough to see it for herself what she saw actually chilled her. It was an utterly mundane sight that, in her current situation, was far more unsettling than it was comforting despite the warmth and safety that it indicated on the surface.

The electric lantern sat on the ground was clearly jury-rigged, its soft glow flickering imperfectly. Above all, it was clearly fresh.

Whoever had set this lamp had done so recently. They weren't here now, but they were sure to come back soon.

There was something else in the tunnels with her, that much she knew, that the thing still had enough humanity left to fix up a lantern and create a dwelling was disturbing. Because, as she looked around the corners of the small, cramped room illuminated by the lantern, that was what it really was.

There was a bed, a desk, a rather large pile of rotting raw meat and bones in one corner. Refuse of the creature's prey.

Numbered tallies covered the wall at one point. The scratches had went on and on but it wasn't possible to accurately read them anymore. Not when the bottom of the wall was marked over by massive gashes that carved up and destroyed the records of the days gone. Even just looking at it she could imagine the fury, or the snap of madness that must have taken ahold of the person when they wrecked their own attempt at keeping track of the days.

A pile of books. Frayed and yellowed and strewn about messily, she briefly went through them.

Their topics seemed random, almost. They ranged from children's storybooks to animal encyclopedias to medical journals.

The bed was yellowed, various spots across the mattress covered in blots of black and red fluid that she didn't even want to speculate what was. And not only did it show signs of use, when she laid a hand upon it the mattress it still felt warm.

A handheld mirror laid under the mattress, yet it was shattered, completely unusable.

And then, beyond the books and the bed and the lantern, the most distinguishing features of the lair.

Scribbled all over the walls in whatever the writer could find, ink or fungal fluid or blood, were but a few simple words.

_Ellie Ellie Ellie I Am I AM ELLIE ELISABETH Taylor I am Ellie ELLIE is me eLLIE_

Repeated over and over and over again, covering the entire wall from ceiling to the bottom. A mantra of madness.

Sitting in the center of the altar, for there wasn't a better way she could describe it, was a photograph that had been circled with a big red marker. A cute-looking youthful woman with chocolate hair tied into a ponytail and wearing an olive green military uniform. Surrounding the photo, which was taped to a picture frame, were maybe a dozen girl's dolls in various states of dismantlement and decay.

She looked back at the bed, the books, and at the shattered mirror behind her.

Wasn't there someone named Ellie in Alpha team? She remembered hearing that name being tossed out somewhere. It seemed like years ago.

...did she, though? Or was it possible that it was just yet another foreign memory, slipped into herself from another soul from long ago?

Matter of fact, hadn't the hallucination taking the form of her brother mentioned losing a rookie in these tunnels?

It was clear now that this was something, somebody's lair. And she did not want to be here went it came back.

A quick run-through of the drawer yielded objects she did not want to think about. More pictures in varying states of damage, a lockbox that she didn't have a key to. More importantly, what she found in the back of the lowest drawer was a gun. An aged M19 handgun, rusted and in disrepair but still in a condition that could fire. When she checked it only a single bullet remained in the chamber.

The box of .45 ACP cartridges next to the pistol was a welcome surprise and with deft practiced hands she loaded the pistol, readied it for action.

She looked around the creature, the girl's lair, then back down at the pistol that had been unloaded of its ammunition, stored away into the bottom of a drawer.

There were silent implications there, she felt that she could grasp a theory about the condition of this person at this moment, but there were unknowns involving the human factor that she hadn't yet taken into account.

For a moment she considered if she should take the gun with her. Even with what she'd seen of the lair she knew next to nothing about its owner. Was she still reasonable, had managed to hold on to some semblance of humanity?

She looked at the scribblings on the walls, discarded toys, the pile of partially consumed raw flesh.

No, she had to assume not.

The decision to claim the pistol as her own became easier after that.

Deeper into the labyrinth she went. The underground didn't seem to be ending. Cavernous rock intermingled with industrial concrete and caved-in basement buildings. Perhaps the Soviet facility really was larger than she had assumed and most of it had simply crumbled into the maze that she now found herself in.

Mumbling, babbling voices echoed off the spacious cavern ahead of her. She shut off the flashlight and peeked over from between a split rock to see… something.

She couldn't much of it from the limited illumination but she could see enough to tell it was large, a truck-sized mass of muscle and lumpy tumors and too many vestigial limbs.

With a choking wheeze the beast lumbered off, each step of its movement creating a splash of water.

Gone.

Where was she even going? There was no guarantee she was going to find what she needed to at the bottom of this. The Heart of the bloom. Its description by the man in the video log was too vague. Simply being told she would recognize it wasn't enough.

Because if her plunging deeper and deeper into the depths amounted to nothing but a dead end, it would all be for nothing.

Especially considering she was surrounded by monsters.

The flashlight flickered.

The tunnel seemed to grow smaller and tighter as she went, wading through stagnant horrible water that went up to her chest level. She was painfully aware that there wasn't much she could do to defend herself if she encountered anything in these tunnels. As strong a punch as .45 ACP rounds packed the handgun would be next to useless in the water, and having to hold her arms above her to keep them dry and light her way had the double effect of ensuring handling other objects would be very difficult.

She moaned in disgust when coming across another grated fence, one that had been covered over by organic fungal growths. It wasn't really the growths alone that did it, but the way the organ-like sac quivered and made a squealing noise, like that of a screaming pig, when she grabbed and twisted it to rip it away from the knob.

The deeper she went down, the fleshier the labyrinth became.

Flesh was already there from the beginning but there it was a mix of the meat growing over and corrupting structures that were manmade.

But over time there was less and less of concrete and metal and more of fungus and pink flesh.

Her footsteps made squelching sounds, each one landing in the orange vomit-like slime that now covered the floors everywhere she went. The moaning, squealing sounds in the far background had never stopped since she began the descent.

And out of nowhere -

"Hello?" a voice asked. A female voice. It sounded… normal. So human.

Rather than cry out a reply or try to approach where she heard it she slid up against what looked like a Cold War-era computer databank.

"Is there someone there?"

Something was… off about the voice. It sounded human, not like a monster attempting to parrot human speech, but… something about it wasn't right. Like there was a slight resonance to the vowels, and it was unusually hoarse, but…

"Leave me," the voice gasped, and with a sudden growl added, "Leave me alone."

She peeked out from behind her cover and saw… something, someone, just standing there and staring in her general direction.

The thing she saw was short, about her height, with a slight, feminine frame. She wasn't sure what she had been expecting but it wasn't something that still appeared relatively human, an average-looking human. But she knew now that there was nothing she could trust about this island. All she could see was a vague silhouette, lit only by a scant few flickering lights. As she watched the figure convulsed violently every few seconds, as if an involuntary nervous response.

Her steps were stiff, and oddly janky, as she turned away from where she was looking to move into the opposite direction.

After a few moments came the crying, the moaning.

Her form shuddered as she appeared to bury her face in her hands.

She recognized the sounds. It was same voice that she heard from far earlier, the harrowing wails travelling all the way through the bowels of the labyrinth and joining with the other sounds in a cacophony of madness.

"No. No no no no no no no no no…" the woman was murmuring to herself.

As quietly as she could she continued sneaking behind the scant cover afforded by what there was in the room, hoping that the squelches produced by her footsteps would fade into the strange and disturbing symphony of the labyrinth's ambience.

"It wasn't supposed to be this way!" she suddenly shouted at thin air, her voice seething with fury.

Rachel wasn't ready for the animalistic scream before the creature struck at the walls behind it, strong enough to produce sparks. It lashed out at nothing in particular for several moments screeching and roaring all the while before breaking down into a bout of what could have been either sobbing or crazed laughter.

A glint caught her eye, and she saw the shine of a keycard dangling around an alcove in front of her.

More than that, she saw what seemed to be a slumped-over corpse next to it. The body still looked fresh.

If she wasn't mistaken, clutched in his dead hands seemed to be a full-sized pump action shotgun.

"Stay away from me. Stay away. Stay away!"

How long had the woman been down here? It could have been anywhere from mere months to years. She couldn't imagine being trapped down in a place like this plagued with madness and hallucinations for what amounted to eternity.

A sad example of long-term infection with the bloom.

Perhaps what Rachel was witnessing now was a preview to her own inevitable fate. Gnawing on raw flesh and lashing out at shadows as her mind deteriorated and she wouldn't be able to distinguish what was hers and what wasn't anymore.

"I don't want to hurt you…" the woman sobbed.

Was she somehow being compelled by the bloom to attack others? Or was it something else entirely?

Her words implied it was a compulsion she was actively fighting.

Something shattered in the back area of the room. It sounded like falling glass.

The creature's reaction was instant, it snapped up and growled in a hoarse voice. "Where… are… you…" it drawled out, walking towards the source of the disturbance, making a series of raggedy croaking noises as it did so. Her back was still turned to Rachel, the posture straightened up rather than hunched over as before.

As she walked under the dim glow of an overhead light she could see more of the thing, her skin was tinged gray and there were an uneven series of small luminescent growths on her back, and a jagged spike of bone that had erupted upwards through her right heel, forcing her to walk on the balls of that foot and lending an uneven gait to her walk.

And Rachel realized that she was almost completely naked, the only clothing on her being were the shredded undershorts that still clung around her hips. If anything it made it all look worse, exposing the body that was once beautiful but was now bloodied, had the skin tone of a decomposing corpse that was riddled with countless scars and fungal growths.

The thing paused as it reached the spot, looking around for a brief moment before again slashing furiously at the ground with its weapon that she couldn't yet see. "Come out! I know you're here and I'll kill you with my bare hands!" it screamed, her threat of violence upon Rachel contradicting the desperate pleas that she uttered mere moments earlier.

Rachel snared her hand around the dangling keycard.

It slipped off without a hitch.

And behind her was a roar of fury. The woman's mind overwhelmed by the monster that wanted to kill Rachel.

It was rushing at her, the strange footing uncanny while she screamed bloody murder. The cognizant threats had given way to inarticulate roars and screams as it raised its left arm.

There was nothing left of a semblance of a forearm, her left arm terminated at the elbow in a ragged stump of flesh. It wasn't a clean cut, the bumps and strands of remaining flesh were uneven and it was clear her arm had been quite messily torn off. Growing out from the bloody stump were two growths of bone, each ending in a sharp point. The claws making up what was once her forearm were stained with dried blood, and visibly cracked in some parts.

At that range there was no room for hesitation and so she raised the M19 and shot the charging mutant twice in the chest.

The impact of two bullets at point-blank range probably wasn't enough to kill even the weakest B.O.W, but it was enough to stun it momentarily. Blood and orange fungal slime spurted out the bullet holes as it stumbled backwards before its unstable gait caused it to topple. Even on its back it was still thrashing and writhing, fluids and growths of bloom bursting out of where she'd shot it.

Not knowing how much more time she had left she made a grab for the shotgun.

Only to realize the rigor mortis that had set in meant the shotgun was clutched tight in the dead soldier's cold hands.

She struggled and pulled while hearing the monster growl and get up back on its feet and finally managed to rip the shotgun off the corpse as the monster screamed yet again. She rolled to the side a moment before clawed bone stabbed into the soldier's body, and the monster screamed in rage as it brutally ripped and tore into the corpse that was already dead, its attention set completely on what it thought was its target.

Not wasting any time Rachel turned around and ran. She didn't know where she was running to, only that she wanted to get away as far as she could.

"Run! Keep running!" the woman screamed some distance behind her.

"_Run, Rachel!_" Marcus suddenly yelled from the radio. "_Get the hell out of there!_"

The gunfire and the commotion had cost her dearly and now the element of stealth, which had been the one thing keeping her alive was gone. Echoing all around were the screams and howls of other monsters. Baying for her blood.

Without warning her flashlight suddenly illuminated a horrifically tall, thin monster that looked like a flayed corpse stretched out to grotesque proportions standing before her mere feet away. It reached at her with long insect-like arms before she pointed the shotgun and fired it.

In the tightened spaces of the tunnel the shotgun's blast was like a cannon explosion. All she could hear was tinnitus, and there was a mighty spray of flesh and bone as the thing's spine cracked in two, its torso falling off while the legs continued to walk towards her, sprouting tentacles from its waist that thrashed for a moment before they, too, fell over like a lifeless puppet.

Moaning in disgust she pumped the shotgun and continued fleeing down the tunnel.

If a scuffle with a single monster and two handgun shots raised this much attention she didn't want to find out what kind of monsters would a shotgun blast attract.

Two different paths. She took the right.

More running. She could hear female screaming behind, catching up.

"Faster!" the mutated woman demanded. "Get away from me!"

An electronic door! One that looked far more modern than the Soviet construction.

Without thinking about it she slid the keycard in the reader. It was a million-in-a-one chance that the card she snagged would be the right one for the door and if it wasn't she would have wasted time but if it was it could provide a –

The light blinked green and the door slid open.

Rushing through it she chanced a glance around to see the nightmarish image of the running mutated woman emerging out of the darkness like a phantom, the glowing amber eyes filled with nothing but raw madness.

Immediately she shut the metal door. Frantically felt around for a lock -

Wild footsteps were rushing right up to the door –

Twin bone claws ripped right through the metal like it was made of nothing, missing her head by mere inches. She stared at the claws that were next to her face, dazed at how close she had been from certain death.

Then the claws withdrew and the woman screamed like a raging animal, and then she started pounding on the door, each blow of its fist causing a dent in the metal. And as she backed away the monster stabbed again and again into the door, ripped through the metal with horrible screeching noises, until it had made a hole big enough for it to clamber through.

The action took only a second and then she was facing Rachel, bloodied and horribly mutated and tits-bare it opened its mouth in a feral scream that didn't sound like anything a human could make.

In all her previous glimpses of the creature she'd only seen it at a distance and obscured by darkness, but now here it was completely exposed for her to see. The proportions had looked slightly off, her voice had sounded off, but nowhere was it possible for Rachel to guess that it was because both the her head and the bottom of her neck neck ended in bloody stumps – with a column of orange, black-veined fungus that that served as a crude neck securing the formerly-decapitated head to her body.

"I'll kill you, you fucking bitch! Get away from me!" it howled. Its face still looked mostly human, and she vaguely recognized it from the photo of the girl at the altar. Black tears of the bloom trailed from its eyes.

She had some idea of what to expect when the monster was blasted with shotgun shells, and it certainly wasn't displaying no reaction whatsoever to the buckshot that was fired into its chest. It didn't seem to realize at all when Rachel blasted its bare breast into a red-and-orange bloody mess.

She pumped the shotgun to fire again and in that moment the monster crossed the distant within a flash.

Getting impaled through the gut hurt less than she thought it would. That seemed to be an unnervingly common reaction she had to injuries nowadays. She didn't really feel much of anything, just a mildly numbing pain like a stomachache as the monster shoved its claws ever deeper through her torso. She could feel torrents of her blood gushing out her back.

Staring at the mutated girl's face up-close was a strange experience.

Its face, though twisted from the rage forced onto its mind, seemed to be struggling in the twitches of its muscles. Despite the rage that emanated from her voice and the bared teeth, her eyes seemed to be almost watery, like she was actually crying. Those eyes looked unsettlingly sad.

So focused she was on staring at her victim close-up, the girl didn't realize as Rachel pushed the barrel of the shotgun into her chest and pulled the trigger.

This time there was a reaction, a stunned look on the girl's face before she stumbled backwards, feeling with her right hand around the gaping hole in the middle of her chest. She looked back up at Rachel and this time it was completely sorrow that was all that she expressed, as if the bloom had relinquished control of her mind.

"Sorry," the mutated girl choked, before falling backwards.

Smoke trailed out the shotgun's barrel, Rachel staring down at the girl's body as she panted.

Turned around and took a few steps forward before glancing at her stomach. Crimson and orange both flowed freely out of the twin holes.

"Oh, that's… that's bad," she mumbled. Quite the understatement.

Trying to think of what she could about first aid was a strange and wonderful idea.

She walked way further than she thought she would. Maybe that was a new feature of the bloom, it would now let her persist bleeding out for a few minutes more than normal. Ha.

She did persist long enough to see a sign that was written in English, so that was that. 'Chemical Storage' or something.

"_Rachel? What happened! I heard the gunfire, talk to me!_" the voice on the radio said. Ha, Marcus again. Good to know the hallucination cared about its imaginary younger sister this much.

"_Rachel, say something! Don't you die on me!_"

She was dying? Funny, she just felt sleepy, that was it.

"_You hang in there! I'm coming for you!_"

It was all she could remember before she slumped down, and dragged herself to sit against a wall.

Perhaps it would be good if she just took a quick nap.


	17. Cacophony

**Cacophony**

The pop of champagne was almost like a jolt back to reality.

She stood there for several moments, completely still and unsure of what was happening. She was surrounded by bright lights, almost dazzling in their intensity. Voices and laughter filled her ears, and men and women in suits and party dresses were everywhere she looked.

She looked down at herself just to be sure. There wasn't a speck of dirt or blood on her skin. Not a trace of lumps, mutations either. Her arms, both of them, looked normal. And she was garbed not in a tattered top and pants, but a purple cocktail dress. She remembered this. It came into her possession when she was pushed into attending the summer ball that marked the end of college. She had been annoyed at the prospect of going in the first place and it was her friend who picked out her wear for her.

But she didn't remember the expensive bracelets that adorned her wrist. She didn't care about extra things like that. Where had they come from..?

Despite the sheer normality of it she couldn't help but notice something was off about her body too. Even without obvious deformations.

She seemed… shorter. Smaller.

Her limbs and abdomen were lithe, not a single trace of the muscle that would bulk out some of her form after years of training and service in the military.

Something was wrong. Very terribly wrong.

She glanced around with a look of great uncertainty, her deep breaths attempting to steady themselves to get her heart down. Was this a dream? Or a hallucination? The latter was a far more dangerous possibility. If she was hallucinating herself in a party from years in the past there could be dangers that she was unaware of, every step she took was a potential hazard.

And her eyes came upon the splash of red in the crowd.

A tall redheaded girl with gorgeous velvety hair, a beautiful freckled face with a bright smile that could win over anybody, and a dress that drew attention to all her wonderful curves.

Sue. The first girl she undeniably, indisputably felt attraction for.

Wait. Why was this happening? She had gotten over Sue long, long ago. Hell she'd gotten over the notion of pursuing love itself long ago. In the long run its appeal faded and she simply didn't see the point of it. Love wasn't something she loved anymore.

So why then was she feeling warm all of a sudden? Her cheeks hot and flushed?

She was getting turned on. But she didn't want to.

She was terrified, it wasn't supposed to be like this, she knew who she really was and yet she was helpless to resist the temptations. There was no control, no matter how much she tried to tear her eyes away they remained fixed on Sue, drawn to them by some force she couldn't understand.

The redhead had a knowing look on her face. Without being prompted she left the group of friends she had been conversing with and starting walking towards the lone Asian chick awkwardly staring at her.

Her heart was beating faster and faster as she walked closer, unsure of what to expect. And she remained frozen in her position as Sue made the approach. She found herself staring at Sue's chest, at the generous amount of cleavage, and couldn't turn her eyes anywhere else, overcome by the sense of lust that she didn't want to listen to.

A devious smile lapsed across Sue's lips. She knew where Rachel's eyes were looking and she wanted her to look.

Amusement. That was what she was thinking.

And for a single, brief moment of sudden freedom Rachel ripped her eyes away from Sue's breasts, flitting them about the party with an increasing sense of panic before she found them fixed on Sue's face instead and once again all sense of control escaped her and she was beset by the alien force that was toying with her mind.

She couldn't deny that Sue was gorgeous, there was once upon a time when she openly lusted after her and loved talking to her, appreciating the things they shared in common. But that was a long time ago. All she could feel now was complete repulsion and the desire to get as far away from Sue as she could.

"Rachel! Didn't know you were gonna show up!" Her voice was bright and cheery, ignoring the confused and terrified look that Rachel returned. "What's with the long face? You can tell me about it."

"I…" she began, only to realize she didn't how to do this.

How could she have a conversation with someone she knew wasn't real?

But she couldn't break away despite her great efforts to.

"I… got into a fight. It was something that shouldn't have happened at all but I let it happen. It got heated, things went out of control –"

"Hey," Sue interrupted, wrapping an arm around Rachel's neck and pulling her in. "Some things you just can't control no matter what. Best if you accept that and move with the flow, right?" Again her seemingly genuine smile returned. She flashed her pearly teeth.

Rather than properly reply Rachel just gasped and panted. God, they were so close to each other she could practically smell Sue. The lust was overpowering. Her body, her beauty, it was perfect. She needed to get the hell away but all she wanted was to give Sue the most passionate kiss she could summon and rip her dress off so they could do it there and then.

No!

None of it was real! She couldn't give in to the illusions conjured up by the bloom. Not even if it was forcing her body into overproducing hormones that were driving her libido to a level that was fast approaching uncontrollable.

"Hey. Look at me, babe."

The voice she heard was low, seductive, and she felt forced to look at Sue.

This time when Sue smiled it wasn't an innocently cheery smile. Rather a look of intense desire was what she saw.

"I'm standing here graduating with my beautiful girlfriend and we're gonna move into a new apartment in San Francisco when all this is done and over with. Nobody's got the guts to say it but they're all jealous of you. Good god, are they jealous and I wouldn't blame them one single bit. Between you and me, I couldn't be a happier girl."

They were… official?

Moving to San Francisco?

That wasn't right, she was about to be shipped to boot camp by the next week -

"So…"

She leaned close into her ear and whispered, "You wanna fuck tonight? I'd say you earned it."

"We're together?" She asked, each breath hot and heavy and quaking with fear at the unwanted lust. Her legs were trembling. Part of it was because of how blunt Sue was, and that she wanted to fuck her so badly. Wasn't that what they did in the past after the party? Her first time with a girl…

The other part was her fighting it all so she could run as far away as she could.

Sue tilted her head. "We were always a couple, silly. I asked you out for the first time in the library. You were sitting all alone, just you and your stack of books and a cup of cheap coffee that was so strong it was practically 99-percent caffeine…"

No, she had no memory of that.

Were there?

She could… remember? A foggy memory. Yes, she was alone in library and Sue approached her, and they just hit it off and…

No.

It wasn't real. Sue had never approached her before the party. They'd never even spoken before.

None of this was real.

"You're not real."

"Maybe I'm not." She casually answered, face utterly calm and her tone shockingly blunt in her admission of the fantasy.

"But you feel this, Rachel?" She took Rachel's hand and put it atop her breast. It was soft and warm to the touch. "This? This is real."

It did feel real. Flesh and blood and everything else. Her knees suddenly felt very shaky, a hot flush coming to her cheeks. Her beating heart, the moistness between her legs. She shut her eyes and let out a throaty moan. Everything felt so real.

"Kiss me?" Sue whispered with a pout.

To her horror, her face started to gravitate towards Sue of their own volition. There was no input, she didn't want to kiss the other girl, and yet she could not stop herself as she leaned in closer and closer.

No. She didn't want this!

A ringing in her ears.

Growing louder, louder, louder –

She pulled herself back.

Pushed Sue away as she stumbled back. The lust was still there, she had to escape the dream before it overpowered her mind again -

The look that Sue gave her was shocked. Confused.

The look of disappointment and dismay appeared almost real. "But… isn't this what you want?" Her voice shook just slightly.

What did she want? She didn't want love!

She wanted…

She wanted…

Everything snapped to black.

###

And all she could see was black.

Except her eyes were open and her vision was muffled. Not just her eyes but everything on her face was covered. She couldn't even breathe.

She let out a terrified scream and thrashed with her arms, her legs, and they struck against something warm and wet. Actual physical things. Real. Real.

Enwrapped around her.

Her arms were free and she grabbed at the wet slimy stuff ensnaring her and pulled them off in chunks.

She continued to kick and scream as she ripped her way out of the vile stuff sealing her within the wall, and she wasted no time in scrambling back, shaking her head and getting the scraps of disgusting bits of flesh off her face, her hair, her everywhere.

Things was, the awful place she found herself in was far more preferable to the living hell she was just forced through.

Wherever she was in it was almost completely dark, with not a single source of light in sight. The thing that almost her entire body had been stuck in almost looked like a literal wall of flesh and fungus. She couldn't make out very many details, but there was enough for her to see that it was squirming and moving.

Then she realized there was a fleshy thing, ropelike, that extended from the wall and stretched to her, where it had burrowed itself into her stomach, the same area where she had been stabbed through. Like it was the bloom's idea of first aid.

Moaning in disgust she ripped the tentacle out with a spray of slime.

Her hands were… well, it was bad. But she was more comfortable with the horrific truth than the beautiful lies that the bloom was feeding her about what her physical state was really like.

Where the hell was she? How did she even end up stuck in that wall and trapped in a hallucination that seemed so real?

The last thing she remembered was in a strange, new part of the labyrinth, having fended off and killed a mutated human, and collapsing –

She spun around in panic as if expecting to see someone there.

Nobody.

She staggered to her feet, almost tripped again on the slippery, squelching surface of the floor. All around her were strange moaning, wheezing sounds but she ignored them the way she had ignored the ambient background of the underground all before this.

Effectively blind, her hands felt around for what she could.

The M19 was still in her holster. Good.

Shotgun, no. It was most likely left where she had fell and presently she had no idea where that was. How did she end up in this place? Did she make it here herself in her delirium after being stabbed, the latest in a line of terrible injuries being inflicted on her body, or was she moved her by something else?

The flashlight was cracked, broken beyond repair. Still she had options. She fumbled in the dark until she got her hands on the emergency flare. It took one strike, two strikes, and then –

The room became bathed in a red glow.

Something wasn't right about the room.

She slowly approached one of the walls.

And a face, a human face, squinted and shied away from the glare of the flare. It made a weak, moaning sound of discomfort.

All she could do was blink, as she tried to comprehend the sight before her. And then she looked around the room.

Walls of flesh and bloom.

And surrounding her were faces. Bulging eyes. Half-formed bodies that hadn't yet fully assimilated. Mouths stretched into silent screams.

And it was everywhere, filled the entire room, the walls, the floor she stepped on, the ceiling, all of it flesh that moved. Organs strewn about, moving and breathing on their own accord, intestines intermingled with the filament veins of the bloom's corruption. A living organism unto itself as she found it impossible to tell where the room even ended and where the living organism began.

On some level she shouldn't have been surprised. She remembered the corpse in the coffin. The man they'd found in the ceiling. What she was seeing was simply the next logical step.

But to actually… be facing such a thing now was…

She had to force the hand over her own mouth to stop the vomit from coming and even then it didn't completely work. The very contents of her stomach felt like they were squirming. She took a step back and tripped, scrambling as far away from the faces and the bodies on the wall.

Something hot and bony grabbed her wrist and she looked down to see an eye staring back at her.

Pulling away from it she leapt up with a scream.

When she looked in another direction there were more, more faces and eyes watching her.

And when she forced herself to look elsewhere there were more still. They were everywhere, in every direction she looked! Melted into the walls of flesh and fungus!

No! Get out!

A weak, pitiful voice moaned, "Rachel, help."

The most horrifying thing when she turned around to face the source of the voice was that she didn't even recognize him, when she knew he was someone she had known days ago. One of the soldiers, his name forgotten to her.

Half of him was missing, his intestines hanging out. He had not yet been fused as much into the walls, the growths only starting to merge into his back, but he was still alive. Still had enough strength, even, to lift his arms up in a futile gesture for aid.

"Help me…" he moaned.

All she could do was stare at him, mouth slightly agape in horror. And as she looked around none of the _people _seemed mindless. Their eyes told all the stories it needed. Still filled with emotions she could see pain, fear, silent pleas for help and a merciful death everywhere she looked…

"Kill me," moaned another voice from somewhere, this one a woman's.

"Save us."

"Let it end."

"It won't let us go."

Several arms, some stripped of flesh and reduced to little more than bone, reached out to her. The mouths opened and screamed, in unison.

A cacophony of the damned.

Their moans and screams merging into a single symphony of living hell.

She looked downwards and tried her damnest to ignore the countless merged and dissolved people beneath her feet to focus on her stomach. The holes of her wounds had vanished, replaced by greyish, almost brittle looking fungal tissue.

And she felt pain in her ankles, turned around to see one of the people glaring at her with an almost furious expression, one of his hands grabbing at her leg with a grip that was cold and deathly strong. All that was left of him was a head and a vague outline of a torso, and his body was fused with another person's, a woman's, to form a gruesome gestalt.

"How?" he, she, the voices of both of them speaking at once, demanded. "How could you escape?"

If she had been here any longer, trapped in the hallucination of a perfect life that the bloom had conjured up –

She would have become one with them all. Fused into the wall and assimilated into the mass of souls trapped through the bloom.

The fate might still be coming for her. She could feel something like flesh creeping up her leg from the person's grip, the sensation almost like fiery snakes burning through her veins.

"Let go of me!" she screamed with a desperation to save her life. No, it wasn't her life she was fighting for, that would be too merciful. She was fighting for her very soul.

She kicked, as hard as she could, and the hand tore off and flung off into another part of the floor when flesh bubbled up, seemed to ensnare and assimilate the severed hand into the biomass.

More wriggling tendrils that could have been people snaked their way towards her, seeming to pull her in.

"Why you!" someone from the other side yelled and cried at the same time, someone who still had retained more of his body than others. "Why you, and not us?!"

This was the madness that was the bloom, she realized. A hell on earth that truly felt like something from another world where humans were not meant to be. It was only at this moment that Rachel Yun, finally recognized the gravity of her mission. This could not ever be unleashed into the world. Sacrifices had to be made because the bloom must be destroyed.

She had to kill the heart of the bloom, at all costs.

The voices erupted into chaos. Pleas for help, over and over and over again. Pleas for death.

And she ran.

She had to run. What else could she do?

There was something about her which prevented the heart of the bloom from achieving complete grasp over her body and her soul. The poison she injected into herself, the mycetotoxin coursing through her bloodstream, there was no other explanation. If anything it was a proof of concept, a demonstration that in some capacity it worked and she could escape from the living nightmare where the countless others around her could not.

They screamed, they yelled, they cursed her, wanted her to come back. How could she blame them? She was possibly the first person to ever be freed from the nightmare of the bloom, if only for a moment, of course they would turn to her for salvation.

Something she could not provide now.

She had to keep going because if she did not the weight of the things that she had seen would crush her into nothing but oblivion.

Not matter how far she ran it seemed the cacophony of the screams refused to leave her. The assimilated were already horrific enough to look at, she'd never seen anything like it in her years of biohazard studies and visiting the sites of outbreaks, but it was the sounds, those moans and cries of raw suffering, that really got to her.

Every second spent longer threatened to crack further a psyche which was already long on the verge of breakdown.

###

She'd been running, sneaking, dodging and fighting tooth-and-claw.

Getting wounded didn't seem to faze her anymore. If anything the pain seemed to fuel her complete lack of care about her own well-being. Every time a monster got its claws on her flesh she uttered a guttural scream of fury and thrashed, fought back even harder with whatever she had on hand. Bare hands included. On one occasion a monster that still resembled a human grabbed her and her response was to hook her thumbs into its eye sockets, rendering it a blinded, screaming mess.

On the few times she caught a glimpse of her reflection – for she refused to accept what she could see of herself with her own eyes as reality anymore – her form really wasn't something she could consider human anymore. She wouldn't call the woman she looked like a mere diseased patient. Why? She'd already degenerated into yet another insane inhabitant of the island, reduced to her most primal bits.

The only thing distinguishing her from the crowd was her goal.

Reach the heart and kill the mind.

After all, it wasn't like she had anymore incentive to do otherwise.

Another snarling monster, some kind of humanoid thing that nothing but tentacles in place of a lower jaw, earned a multitude of knife stabs into its throat and collapsed. It still twitched and with an inarticulate roar she stomped down on its head to smash it into a million pieces.

Some kind of dog-thing tackled her to the floor. In the scuffle she ensuing its jaws chomped down on her hand and then her mind filled with nothing but red, and she pulled with such strength that the dog's jaw was ripped down to the chest, spilling out the intestines.

Maybe in some way, her rampage in the flesh-soaked bowels of the abyssal nightmare was motivated by some desire to avenge the countless men and women who were trapped by the bloom, in eternal suffering. And that vengeance fueled her ever-escalating hatred of the faceless, formless intelligence that was looming over everything its fungus corrupted. Where was once curiosity was now desperation and a drive to kill the thing and wipe it off the face of the earth.

There was almost nothing left of the scientist who wanted to study all of this and learn the secrets of the bloom. That had been reduced to occasional thoughts and contemplations from the back of her head that would soon be drowned out by noise.

Noise that took the form of foreign thoughts and feelings, the minds of others that she knew were invasive, robbed her of more of what made her Rachel Yun.

And when they left, in its place was a feral woman who had nothing left to lose. Perhaps that was the thing truly fueling her rage.

Eventually she found herself in a massive cavern, maybe a hundred feet tall and there she saw it, a straight beam of pure light shooting down from the ceiling far above.

A lone beacon of light out of the abyss.

The vast cavern was circular and she could easily see everywhere she could turning around the center of the space as she came closer to the light, drawn to it like flies to lamps. And dangling enticingly from the top of the light, all the way down to the ground, was a single, fine, threadlike rope.

Cautiously she gently took the thread in her hand and pulled.

The grip seemed tight.

And so she began her ascent. Back up to the light and away from the screams and moans of the damned.

The light seemed to stretch on forever.

When she was maybe halfway through she felt a strange tug on the rope, inexplicable heavy weights crawling up, and she risked a peek down and sure enough there were a row of the things, mutated monsters climbing up the rope after her…

More creatures she could see, crawling out from everywhere and converging on the rope.

Upwards and upwards and upwards she climbed towards the light -


	18. The Garden

**The Garden**

She was lying down, curled over in a fetal position.

The ground was soft, wet and earthy. Smelled of fresh grass.

She stayed like that for what felt like minutes, breathing deeply and taking it all in, before she managed to push herself onto her feet.

Yes, it was grass that she was surrounded by. Moss, creeping vines and other vegetation among rock. Shimmering diamond dust, the spores of the bloom, floating in the air and lending an ethereal glimmer to the vivid sunlight. Her attention was drawn down to a single beautiful flower growing by her hand. She stared at it, with a strange sense of disbelief.

She was apparently in some kind of ruined building, staring up skywards she could see there was cracked and crumbling concrete, but the hole was mostly gone and sunlight poured in to create the idyllic and beautiful oasis she found herself lying in.

But how?

She had descended far, far beneath the earth.

Went down countless long spiraling stairways, claustrophobic tunnels, elevators and even simply going down holes, crawling down holes sometimes, with no clear way of coming back up.

And now, inexplicably – sunlight. Birdsong.

Back on the surface.

She plucked the flower and brought it to her nose. Sniffed it.

The aroma was faintly sweet.

After all she'd been through, everything she had seen, it was like paradise. Everything she'd experienced felt like a distant nightmare that couldn't hurt her.

Then she looked at the concrete blocks ahead of her. She had been… sleeping, apparently, in a small room that was already inside of some kind of facility. The construction of the room, floral overgrowth aside, seemed more modern than the Soviet lab. When she glanced at the sign above the door it was written in English.

Somehow she knew, even though there wasn't a word or a sign to confirm it.

She knew she was in the Garden.

And now she was in the laboratory where she would get all the answers she wanted.

She felt around herself just to get ahold of her bearings.

No gun. She could hardly feel surprised by this point.

Her knife which had been at her side all this time was still there but it wasn't something she could count on anymore. It was heavily bloodied and somewhere along the line its blade was bent.

Nothing left on her person but her clothes.

No, the radio.

She hesitated a second before flicking the switches on. "Marcus? You there?"

Nothing.

"Marcus? It's me, Rachel. Do you have me?"

They'd had long conversations, hadn't they? Including ones where she had refused to answer him on the grounds that he was merely made up by her mind. But after all this time she had finally become a believer. There was a part of her that refused to believe he was a mere hallucination, that he was real and her brother was alive.

It lasted for all of two seconds until she flipped the radio over and saw the wires sticking out the back.

They'd been there all along, she realized. For all intents and purposes the thing sitting in her hands was little more than a useless box of dead electronics.

Marcus never was speaking to her through the radio. He never had been.

She knew all along, predicted it to herself again and again. But somewhere in the back of her head an irrational part of her had really, truly hoped Marcus would turn out to be real.

The voices, angry and screaming and baying for blood, they had been silenced. For a moment at least she was at long last freed from the burden of having her identity sapped away bit by bit by the parasitic minds that bled into her personality and memories. If only for a moment before the bloom would subsume it all again.

And she broke under the weight of it all immediately.

The tears flowed freely and for as long as she could remember she was unable to stand as she sat there, howling in despair.

###

When it was over, when she at long last accepted the defeating fact that she was completely and utterly alone, she began her exploration of the Garden.

It was clear the facility had been abandoned for some time. Enough time anyhow for the elements to weather it down, and for plant life to start retaking the laboratory. Everywhere she stepped in its steel hallways there were always creeping vines and flowers, and only occasional patches of bloom growth – but even then, in the ways they grew here they appeared almost natural, blending in with the days-gone atmosphere of the building.

The architecture and the equipment she saw was modern, decayed though it was she could see it was state-of-the-art tech, a far cry from the Cold War-era construction of the underground labyrinth built by the Soviet Union. The use of English indicated it was more than likely the people running this facility were Americans.

As before she searched door-to-door, room-to-room.

Somewhere among all this was the Heart of the bloom and despite everything she hadn't yet regaled on her quest to kill the mind directing all of the fungus on the island. And then maybe, just maybe, the people who were trapped here would be freed.

Unlike the eerie mundanity of the Soviet facility there were clear signs of something terrible having happened in this one.

For instance, the corpses, of which there were none in the Soviet lab, here they were everywhere and she could rarely cross a room without stumbling into at least one body. Shriveled mummified-looking bodies in various states of bodily mutilation, some of them overgrown with the bloom. A few of the corpses she found with abnormal body shapes and proportions – signs of bloom-induced mutation. Others, riddled with gunfire.

So something violent had happened in this American facility. The obvious answer was straightforward, something that had happened countless times across the world – they lost control of their B.O.W.s which led to an outbreak of the bloom, but there had to be something else to the picture.

Signs of battle still lingered everywhere she went, bullet holes in the floors and shell casings.

Ghost-white hazmat suits, long abandoned.

Some of them still carrying the remains of their occupants.

She flipped through data files and reports as she went, skimming only what she absolutely needed because she didn't know how much time she would have left before the poison would consume her, and before that happened she must find the Heart and destroy it.

It wasn't a guarantee that it would destroy everything spawned by the bloom, but at least it would kill the god that dominated the island with hallucinations and madness.

As she had suspected this facility was very recent, it had been built by a private genetics company since at least 2005. She caught glimpses of experiment logs involving the bloom, numbers about typical speeds of infection and mutation, some of the properties of the bloom itself, photographs of cadavers – or were they? – in testing rooms. None of it really mattered to her by this point.

But there was little she could find about a Heart, or the intelligence behind all of it.

It had to be somewhere in this lab.

Her working theory was that the Soviets had created the Heart during their initial development of the bloom, and afterwards the American company salvaged what they could from the old lab, including the Heart – moving everything to their own facility built adjacent to the old lab. That way they'd be able to better study the bloom, or at least that was what made sense to her.

Somewhere deeper in the facility she found herself in a room filled with databanks, and in the center was a large computer terminal connected to countless cables. Like the master terminal. Maybe, just maybe, there was something useful she could find in it.

She pried the fungally-consumed corpse off of the keyboard and pushed on the startup button.

Much to her surprise the computer turned on. She had expected it to be no longer capable of function but surprisingly she was wrong. She wasn't entirely sure what to expect from the computer but again, was greeted with surprise when the first thing that appeared on the screen was not the logo of the United States Army, but rather a generic-looking, simplistic logo that would appeal to investors and casual customers alike.

'Rodasoft Genetic Solutions' was the name displayed with the logo. It wasn't a name she'd heard of before.

As the terminal booted up to its start screen she noticed a message pop up in the corner, easily missable, that an email that had failed to send had now been successfully sent to its intended recipient.

Most likely corporate headquarters.

There was no way for her to connect to the global network but everything she needed was put right there on the desktop, plain for all to see. There was no encryption, no security measures of any kind. So without much else she started looking through the files, and data documents, skimming them all for only the portions that mattered the most.

Rodasoft was an upstart genetics engineering company, one of the many companies that came about in the collapse of Umbrella, and it was contracted by a client who was willing to provide with almost limitless funding for a massive project.

Diamond Blossom.

A bio-weapons project that sought to develop weaponized assets out of a strange lifeform discovered by the Soviets that was best compared to some form of fungus. 'Discovered', she noted, not 'developed' or 'engineered'.

So Rodasoft had been offered a massively lucrative contract to continue their research where the Soviets left off. It must have sounded too good to be a true.

Who was their client?

The Russian government. The documents she found didn't even bother to hide or at least euphemize it.

They effectively gave the company _carta blanche _on researching and refining the bloom that their predecessor state first discovered decades ago. Russia didn't mind pouring what must have been a lot of resources into their new bio-weapons project that was being managed by an upstart and inexperienced company given too much money and leeway, clearly way in over their heads, as long as Russia could be the first ones to have their hands on the new weaponized fungus.

Such were their resources that they were even able to get their hands on samples of Tyrant Veronica virus to contribute their engineering of the bloom. That alone was a feat considering the scarcity of t-Veronica's use in the bioweapons industry. But the usage of an obsolete arthropodic virus alone as, apparently, a stabilizing factor did not tell her much about the nature of the bloom.

There were other disturbing things she found that didn't adequately explain the bloom, but said enough for her to wonder.

A serious flaw was present in the bloom in that Rodasoft was not yet able to figure out how the intelligence behind the bloom worked. The bloom, after all, was a superorganism unto itself – left unchecked, it could grow and consume and expand its biomass endlessly and potentially result in a continental biohazardous catastrophe the likes of which have never been seen. The intelligence was key to that, restraining the bloom's growth and controlling the corruption.

An intelligence had existed all along that was already doing just that, an intelligence that they knew nearly nothing about despite their efforts to study it, but to create a truly viable B.O.W. out of the Diamond Blossom project, they needed to find a way to replicate this control intelligence, and to replicate it in such a way that the intelligence itself could be controlled.

Their latest attempt at such was the conversion of human volunteer subjects, a human consciousness, into an equivalent of a bloom intelligence.

A human consciousness? They had been trying to figure out how to allow a human being to take control of the bloom?

Somehow despite the twisted implications of what the researcher was referring to it made sense, that for the bloom to actually become a useful weapon of scorched-earth and deterrence and not simply a doomsday device, actual human control needed to be established over the bloom.

There was more, a list of names that seemed to all blend into each other.

Henry Calvert. Failure.

Samantha Golding. Failure.

Leonid Zharkov. Failure.

A long list of test subjects for the human consciousness experimentation, all of them ending in failure and the deaths or physical assimilation of the subjects into the bloom. The latest test log made was dated September 2008. Ten years ago. So apparently the company had only maintained their research for three years, before the lab suddenly – and by the looks of it, violently – went defunct.

And since then interested shadow parties in the U.S. government had been sending expeditions to the island, each one ending in failure and madness. Ten long years of a repeating cycle.

And it still told her very little about the bloom's Heart.

There wasn't much left she could get from the computer that wasn't junk data. Whether she liked it or not, she had to proceed further into the facility.

Then maybe, she'd find the Heart of the Bloom.

And kill it. Put an end to it. Burn it all down.

###

Deeper in the facility she went.

And the deeper she went, the stranger it became.

The shimmering dust of bloom spores had been an ubiquitous sight since touchdown on the island but here it was almost choking, the dust cloud so thick it was practically a golden, shimmering fog. Strange pale crystalline growths sprouted from the ceiling, and spreading from them were pale veins like growths, fungal mycelia.

And the signs of what had truly happened in the Garden became ever more uncomfortable.

There were rows of corpses that had remained where the fell with their wrists still bound, indicating execution.

The people apparently killing one another as they suffered from delusion after delusion. Violent psychotic breaks. And the bloom propagating all the while, their dead corpses fueling its growth as it slowly took over the facility.

Writings on the wall, in blood and in bloom fluid.

It was 'watching' them, some claimed.

Others still seemed to regard the bloom with almost superstitious awe. There were holes in the vents, unlocked test cells, where some had apparently tried to deliberately unleash the bloom onto the facility.

But no concrete answers about the nature of the bloom. The research diary had indicated the Soviets did not actually create the bloom – they merely found it.

So what then was the nature of the bloom? Was something so hideously corruptive truly a product of natural evolution? It was certainly possible. Or was there something else she was missing about the big picture?

She'd seen plenty of abnormal signs around the facility but the first one that truly stood out was the fresh shell casings that she spotted on the floor somewhere around what was once the clinic. Fresh bloodstains lingered on the floor.

So somebody had been here, recently.

She got the answer about who it was only seconds later in the adjacent room.

There was a fresh corpse, cloth wrapped around his eyes. Blood stained the rag where his eyes and forehead were. He was seated in a kneeling position, and both his hands were bloodied as they laid open on his thighs like he was in some kind of prayer. In fact, the smatter of bloodstains around the man, almost forming into some kind of art, made it look like it was a demonic ritual.

Even without looking at the dog tags on the man she already knew who he was.

"Captain Clarke," she recognized.

It seemed like forever since she'd become separated from the rest of the team. What had happened to them in the meantime? Had they gone through much the same process that she had? Members of the team going insane one by one, trying to kill each other until, in the end, only one last survivor remained.

The fact that Clarke was alone, seated where he was in the middle of a surgical theater, didn't bode well about the fates of the others in the unit.

She sighed, feeling strangely sad about the mysterious death of the captain. As much as she distinctly remembered not liking him very much earlier during the expedition, of having doubts in his trustworthiness at some points, he had been a good man who tried to do good for his team. And now here he was dead and completely alone, yet another corpse to add to the long cycles of violence. Her attention was drawn to the video log that he had left hanging on his corpse, and not sure about what she'd find she took it off and played it on a camera that had been left on a tripod a few rooms back, in the test subject cells.

Captain Clarke staring into the camera was the first thing greeting her. His eyes were wide, slightly mad.

"I thought my name was Thomas Clarke. A captain. A husband, a father. I had a wife, two beautiful daughters. A farm on the country, with horses. I had friends. I was a mentor. I was a brother, to my little sister, to my brothers-in-arms. And life was beautiful for what it was worth. But I have seen things, and done things, and I can't deny it anymore. Now I don't know who I am. I don't know anymore. The thoughts of a hundred souls infest who I am. Am I Thomas? Or am I Jackson? I'm not sure."

He sobbed. Kneeled down before the camera. His voice was strained, as if it was difficult for him to get out each word.

"I led my men. And to what? I don't know. I don't know what I led them to. They paid a debt that should have been mine and mine alone. I'd done awful things, terrible things… My flesh moves like liquid. My mind… lies in pieces, scattered like dust. I have seen what's in the Garden, and I know what I must do, Amelie. But I don't have the strength to do it. Not when I'd lose you all over again. I cannot do it, even if I know it must be done."

A silence. He began wrapping the cloth around his head. Shielding his eyes.

"I tried, Amelie. I tried my best. But I don't know how to stop it. It can't be spoken to. It can't be reasoned with. It can't be understood. And it can't be fought. How can you fight something you can't understand?"

The man shook back and forth from his crouching position, with the muffled sobs of a complete emotional breakdown.

"It's not like us. It's _unlike _us," he continued ranting. "I don't know what it wants or if it wants. And it will not stop! Not until a town, not until a city, not until a continent, it will not stop growing and spreading its poison until it has consumed _everything_! And our souls will be flayed, stripped down to our basest parts until there is nothing left but flesh."

"What makes us who we are will be violated. We will have no sense of us. Our souls will warp endlessly until nothing remains. Only oblivion."

With that, he leaned back. As if expecting death.

A humanoid shadow appeared in frame, somebody else standing out of the camera. Clarke turned to face the apparition, and then a ghostly smile came upon his lips.

"I love you, Amelie. What is it they say? Till death do us part."

And unlike everybody else she had seen, he remained entirely silent as he died. Violent trembles shook his body as blood and black stuff leaked out of his eyes staining the wrap red, and then with a final shudder became still.

She saw the shadow's maker step forward for just a moment.

It was some kind of… thing. Humanoid but definitely not human. Its form distorted, iridescent almost, blurry in such a way that it was impossible for her to really make out the details of what it was. And it bent down to regard Clarke, the posture of it reminding her of a cat that was curious about a mouse, before the footage suddenly began to burn and nothing else came.

###

In hindsight, it never made sense to believe that because of the birds and sunlight, the escape from the horrors of the underground labyrinth that could have nothing more than a mad delusion all along, the Garden was a paradise. It was a bio-weapons development facility all the same, and presumably the one where the bloom outbreak had first begun.

So when she heard distant monsters somewhere else in the facility, she could not feel the slightest bit of shock. Hell, she hardly even reacted to it anymore. It wasn't like there was much else that could faze Rachel after all this.

Not even when she suddenly, unexpectedly, encountered someone she never thought she'd see again.

He had first stepped out from behind a stack of crates, his gaze focused somewhere to his other side, and when he saw her he immediately raised a pistol with a wild look in his eyes, and she knew he was sincerely ready to shoot her if he needed to.

"Get away from me!" Mike Cox yelled, the blond buzzcut soldier whom she last saw ages ago at the lighthouse.

All the reaction she could muster up was a blank look at the pistol that he was aiming at her head. "Mike," she said softly, "Are you pointing that gun at me because you're trying to kill me?"

Then, as if in afterthought, she added, "Because if you are, then your aim better be good."

No need to inform him she'd already killed two members of their own unit. Even if in self-defense.

Mike opened his mouth and closed it. There was a jittery desperation to his movements, an overwhelming desire to want to believe what he was seeing before his eyes.

"How do I know you're not real?"

"Chinese bitch," she said. "That's what you've called me before."

He stared at her for a long, long time.

And when he finally did lower the pistol, it wasn't relief to see a comrade who still alive that crossed his face. It was shock instead.

"What the hell, Rachel. Is that really you? What the fuck happened to you?"

Somehow his inability to recognize her as Rachel was more unsettling than the gun pointed in her face moments earlier.

And the more she thought about it, the more she realized she couldn't think of a way to properly answer what Mike asked of her. So many things had happened to Rachel that she could no longer even comprehend the transformation that had ensued in the days that passed.

All she could feel was relief that there was a friend. Or at the very least, an ally whom she trusted.

A friend whom she knew was real, concrete, because he threatened to kill her.

###

"What happened to everyone else? After the explosion, the lighthouse."

Mike had nothing to say. He just sat there, eyes to the ground in a haunting stare. They had been sitting there for quite some time, resting. It didn't feel like time was passing at all down here.

Corpses laid around them, at their feet. The signs of a recent skirmish.

"Captain Clarke, he –" Mike finally began, only to shut himself off immediately. Then a sigh. "I've been looking to kill him. Been chasing him all by myself. Pursued him all the way… all the way here."

The bluntness of his admission caught her off guard. "You wanted to kill Clarke?"

"He did something I can never forgive," he said, then he looked down at his hands. "I'd known Captain Clarke all the way back. He, me and… and Sam, we'd all started from the same unit. When someone's your superior for that many years, you get a sense of something more than respect for him. And you don't expect him to ever betray that respect."

"So you respect him. What'd made you jump from respecting him to killing him?" she asked in a low voice, though she realized she might not like the answer.

Mike looked pained to even be telling the story and he opened his mouth to say something, only to retract it to say, "Long story. I'm honestly not sure if I believe it myself."

She thought back to Marcus. The hallucination on the radio that had taken the guise of Marcus. Her own deluded belief, self-excuse really, that she was being driven by Marcus and Marcus alone. And the denial that despite witnessing the horrors and the rage of those who wanted to burn the bloom to the ground, there was still a part of her – a true part, which had remained untouched and uncontaminated by the bloom – that wanted to _preserve _it. Study it. Learn its secrets.

Despite all the pain it had unleashed.

"Talk of lies. I don't know if the man I've been lied to the most is myself," he confessed. Lowered his head down in defeat.

Rachel looked at him.

Put a hand on his.

"Mike. Look at me."

He did. And she saw the suffering in his eyes and realized right away. Then although she might not know exactly what he had experienced through his own journey to the Garden, it was as full of horror and pain as what she went through. He had seen unspeakable things, and she could feel the ghosts of the pain as she looked into his eyes and touched his hand.

Somehow the bloom was to blame. Tiny lingering traces of him bleeding into her and vice versa.

"I… I encountered Sam. She survived, Mike, or at least some part of her did."

As a mutated, unwilling parasite, merged into the body of the bear that had killed her, spending every minute and every second of her miserable existence in agonizing pain.

He looked up. Despite looking prepared for the absolute worse she could see there was just a tiny, lingering hope that something good had come out of all of this.

She shook her head, crushing those hopes in an instant. And he understood immediately what it meant. Even when expecting it, the look of defeat was crushing.

"No."

His fingers clenched and unclenched at each other. "Did she suffer?"

A protracted, painful death? Yes, that she suffered.

She'd laid there on the floor, whimpering in pain and never even getting out last words before she bled to death, just like that. It wasn't a dignified death in the least. It was sad, pitiful, not a death that someone like Sam deserved.

"No," Rachel lied.

Somehow she realized Mike knew she was lying. But still he nodded in a hesitating acceptance. Not of the lie that she told, he knew full well Sam died a painful and ignominious death. But he accepted that Rachel didn't want to cause even more pain than he'd already been through.

Sometimes they lied to spare each other from the pain of it all. Even in this they lied, rather than tell the truth and accept it wholly themselves.

Mike wrought his fingers. His brows furrowing in anger. Without being prompted he began explaining, "Years ago, something… something unforgivable happened to Sam, something she never told me. One of our own was responsible for it. And when Clarke found out about it, he swept things under the rug. To maintain unit integrity or so he said. And Sam just soldiered on with a smile, that's something you can't ever take away from her. She'd walk away from the pain resolving to be stronger than ever, to never let it compromise a positive attitude."

He chuckled as if thinking of some old memory, then shook his head. "But me? I can't forgive that. So I did what I could, and I pulled a gun on him. I should have shot him without a word, I know you would have. But I gave him one chance to explain himself. And what'd he do? He beat me senseless and left me to die." The corporal spat on the ground.

"To think that I… I really looked up to him. Coward. Liar."

She wasn't sure if he was talking about Clarke, or himself.

"How did you… find out about this?"

Slowly he turned to Rachel.

The knowing look said everything, told her everything she needed to know.

No words were actually spoken between the captain and Mike. Clarke would not have discussed something like it in the midst of a mission, although it its current circumstances she wasn't so sure. He would not have carried evidence of what had transpired around with him, either. Except he would have, in his head.

The bloom split people open.

Fragmented them, bled them into others while the minds of others merged into the one. It was a swirling vortex that reduced everyone into one.

One stray, shared memory, unwittingly shared because of something none of them could control, even of a single one, could be incredibly damning because while there were many ways one could fake evidence and testimony there was no way one could falsify one's own thought or memory.

Exposing the unpleasant truths about people that they would have denied. Dragged their worst secrets out kicking and screaming.

And Mike nodded in confirmation. "Yeah."

A silence between the two. Rachel didn't know what to say. It felt like she'd gone back to how she was at the start of all this – out of her element. She was in it when it came to matters of scientific knowledge, her theories. But not small talk. She remembered telling herself countless times before that she didn't care all that much about getting to know people.

How true still was that? Was it just another lie to herself?

The bloom made it difficult for her to trust herself, not knowing if the opinion was really of somebody else's that she believed to be hers and hers alone.

In the end Mike was the one to restart a conversation that had gone cold.

"You know what I'm thinking? We… haven't actually spoken to each other, all that much. I'm talking a real conversation, a heart-to-heart as Sam would have called it. At least, that's what I remember. What do you remember?"

Memories of conversations between she and Mike were scare, and fleeting. How much did she actually interact with him? There were so many gaps in her memories, jumps between events where anything could have happened and they wouldn't have the recollection of it. Things just happened, with no context of the before. She'd appear in a spot knowing what she was about to do but failing to recall why. Her own memories being lost? Or experiencing the lives of others who had been claimed by the bloom and believing them to be her own experiences instead?

"No. I guess we haven't."

Such was how she truly was. Now the last person she was going to see before marching to a point of no return was, for all intents and purposes, a stranger. What a way to die.

"You're a scientist, right?"

She nodded.

"Then… tell me what you think this is. Because when I first saw it a parasite was the first thing that came to my mind. Some kind of… I don't know, protozoa or something. Like the thing that infects ants and grows out their heads, I saw that in a documentary and it was terrifying."

"That's called the cordyceps and it's a parasitic fungus."

Which, technically, the bloom also was. Or so it seemed, because now she wasn't sure either. By this point, was calling the bloom a fungus really the right terminology? It defied so many conventions of what traditionally defined a parasitic organism.

No. There was a term far more suitable than a parasitic fungus to describe the bloom. A thing which was the result of runaway mutations, an aberrant corruption was capable of causing further random mutations, and was able to snuff out the lives of people without a second thought simply because it existed. Left unchecked it would consume the entire body of its host, was an everlasting threat that could never be truly defeated, only held back unless one resorted to radical measures that would destroy their own body.

"Cancer."

A pointed glance at her, for explanation.

"It's the best analogue I can think of, to describe the bloom. Not a parasite. A cancer. I can't think of anything more appropriate to describe the lifeform. It doesn't think like us. Doesn't care about things we can relate to. Food, reproduction, survival instinct, no. It cares for nothing outside of purposeless, mindless, infinite growth and transformation. It doesn't control what we see, I assume, because it doesn't care what we see."

"A monster that we have to burn down," he concluded. "Before it corrupts our families. Our friends. And it must be done."

She could only say nothing.

"I don't know if it'll even realize when we burn it down," she said softly. If, in the end, a miracle really did happen.

"How are we going to do it? Because I'm guessing you have a plan and whatever you'll have is ten times better than what I got."

"And what is your plan, exactly?" she asked.

Mike chuckled. "Shoot it with a lot of bullets and see what happens, then shoot it some more."

The only reaction she could muster up was a stare followed by a snorting giggle. "Not a bad plan, I'd say," she said in between her giggling, and then immediately the laughter stopped and she said, "Hell of a lot more dramatic than what I've got in store."

"And that is?"

Before she could answer there was a sudden gag reflex and she keeled over as blood and fungal slime was vomited from her mouth. The thick sludge pooled at their feet as she voided the contents of her stomach two more times, noticing purplish taint in the stuff. A few small chunks of… things too, that could not possibly be the remnants of food. Or could they? She certainly didn't remember eating anything whatsoever for some time now and the only other explanation for that is that they were organs that were being rejected by her system and expelled through the mouth.

What were the symptoms of the mycetotoxic poison?

Cellular decay, self-destruction.

Destruction of the gene structure.

Organ failure.

That would certainly explain her little mess.

"That," she weakly burbled out and sat back, wiped her mouth as if nothing had happened.

Mike seemed completely unfazed too and she could understand that. "That?" he said with a raised eyebrow.

"Poison," she choked. "There's a poison running through my veins. That's my plan. I've made myself into a living, walking carrier of poison, and I will poison the cancer with me by bringing myself straight into its core."

Then after a moment, "Probably gonna kill myself doing it. But hell, if it kills the god of the bloom, it's worth it."

Mike said nothing for a bit. He picked up one of his machetes and flipped it over before offering it to Rachel.

Wordlessly she took the weapon with her.

"What would happen if the mind behind the cancer is something we _can _understand?" he suddenly asked.

She thought of what she'd read. The theories and attempts at creating a human intelligence.

That, she couldn't provide a straight answer.

"Then perhaps we could reason with it," she offered, with a complete lack of humor. "But it's still a cancer, and it still has to die."

There was a sliver of it, however slight, that held true to what she said. A desire to preserve the bloom even in some capacity. And study an organism that could be so paradoxical, so incredible in its myriad forms and capabilities and yet so utterly terrifying.

Regardless of her true thoughts Mike only had one conclusion with him. He looked her gravely in the eye, and without breaking it off grabbed her shoulders and shook them gently, yet firmly. "You go in there, and you make sure you kill that cancer."

"Kill it. Burn it all down."

They both looked up to their left. Sounds were coming down from the corridor. Gurgling groans and roars of monsters.

"Do you think this is it?" he asked, his expression utterly calm.

She looked down at her hands. They were tinged purple, her skin deathly pale from the toxin that was slowly killing her cells, mutated and human both. The same toxin that she would use as a weapon to kill the cancer of the bloom. Her left arm was rotting away entirely, blackened from necrosis with the skin peeling back to expose flesh and, in some parts, pale bone.

Rachel didn't like what she was going to say next, but as it turned out, she never needed to say anything.

"Save it," Mike snapped before she could say a word. "I've got glimpses of everything you're thinking about, you know.

He cocked his assault rifles. Both of them.

In that moment a sudden feeling dropped hard in her stomach and she looked at him pleadingly. "Mike, don't do this. You're not going to make it."

"Neither are you," was his blunt response.

"You've still got a chance. Get out of here and –"

"For god's sake you Chinese bitch, please don't make this any harder than it already is. You've got the tools to end this, so go in there and finish it. Because someone's got to make sure none of those things reach you before the work gets done. So you go now, go before I change my mind."

He raised one of the assault rifles, aimed it down the hallway and readying himself for what would be the fight of his life. All she could do was stare at him helplessly, at the man ready to sacrifice his life.

"You're a good man, Mike. Thank you."

"Just go already, woman."

And she did, but before breaking off into the final corridor she paused to say one last thing to the soldier.

"All this time you'd been calling me a Chinese bitch."

"Jesus Rachel, I know that you're American," he muttered without looking back like he'd been expecting this coming for a long time. But it didn't matter. She wanted to tell somebody before she potentially jumped into the abyss forever.

"If you're gonna insult me by my race you should at least use the right terminology because 'Chinese bitch' is inaccurate. The correct word should be 'Korean bitch'. And my name – my Korean name – is Yun Sun-Hee."

She wasn't just telling it to him.

It was an affirmation to herself, as well.

She was Rachel Yun, Yun Sun-Hee, and she was a scientist, a soldier, a sister and a soon-to-be aunt, and she was the woman who was going to end all of this.

"Sun-Hee," Mike repeated. Then for the first time since she'd first met him, he smiled. "Sun-Hee. I'll remember that."

Before she proceeded through the doors, she turned around to give Mike one last, knowing look. The sounds of encroaching monsters came ever louder.

Mike looked into her eyes and he nodded.

And he looked back around and raised his weapon. Readied himself for battle.

And finally, truly alone now, yet feeling more empowered than ever with the knowledge that a man she had come to respect was now willing to sacrifice himself so she could end the nightmare once and for all, Rachel walked forth into the Heart of the Bloom.


	19. Diamond Blossom

**Diamond Blossom**

A single pit in the ground, almost like a well. The soft, fragmented remains of countless bones littered the chamber like white sand. Human bones. Those who came before.

All the bones pointed in the same direction. All of them, drawn towards the direction of the hole like magnets to a pole. Beams of sunlight streamed down from holes in the ceiling.

She approached the hole with great apprehension, each step crumbling the bones into a fine cloud of dust. The hole was completely black and there was nothing she could see within it. Yet when she leaned her head over it she could feel a current of air, indicating a large space beneath her feet. It didn't look manmade, she realized. The way the earth had long settled, how rock seemed to be growing around the hole, it had indicated that the chasm had existed long before people had arrived on this island. Long before the Soviets arrived and discovered the bloom.

This was it, she realized. Truly the point of no return.

She would be crawling down the hole and she wouldn't be coming back up again.

Of course she hesitated. Anyone would. She stood there, frozen for maybe a few minutes. Her life, her knowledge, her everything, it would all cease to exist once she went down there to confront the Heart.

But she thought back to all the things she'd seen. Sam, Clarke, Mike. The countless souls trapped by the bloom in damnation.

Her hand curled into a fist.

And into the hole she crawled.

Despite how small and tight the hole was, her expectation that it would be an arduous and suffocating slither, she seemed to slip through the hole almost gracefully, like the walls were parting way for her arrival, its dimensions growing larger in response to her presence.

Crystalline growths littered the walls, glimmering with iridescent colors. Yet they weren't, their growths manifesting in veins that spread across the tunnel walls like the corruption that it really was. As she crawled deeper into the hole something felt strange about the draw of gravity, for despite the fact the hole appeared to be straight downward plunge she felt as if she was crawling on her belly instead, the pull of gravity sucking her down from the stomach rather than the head.

She emerged into a room. When she clambered out her boots felt like they were stepping onto a carpet of crumbled glass.

Large and cavernous was the room, shimmering diamond dust in the air. There was a strange smell, but it wasn't foul. It almost smelled pleasant. Refreshing, like the scent of freshly cut grass.

She looked around herself, trying to make sense of what was before her.

The walls almost seemed to be moving. Not the chaotic writhing of flesh and people. But rather a constant shimmering movement that slowly flowed upwards towards the blackness of the ceiling, like a gently flowing current of water moving in calm harmony.

The angles of the cavern were strange, the dimensions seemingly stretching at twists and turns and blending into the nothingness before her, and she felt very uneasy as she took her first uncertain steps forth. There was nothing she could make out of where the cave ended and begun.

She stared into the inky blackness and it stared back.

There were no curves. The darkness seemed to blot out all light entirely, forming a black sheen, glass-like, that drew no curves of light whatsoever. Nothing but a panel of dark, and a complete formless blot of nothing.

She knew that the bloom was, to some degree, sentient. Intelligent.

"Show yourself," she demanded.

Her voice seemed to resonate through the cavern, repeating in echoes seconds on after she uttered them.

_Show yourself show yourself show yourself show yourself show yourself_…

And it showed herself.

A reflection, staring back at her from the blackness.

She saw everything about herself, reflected back from the cave like a mirror. The growing curiosity, then the uncertainty about what it was she was seeing before her eyes. The image she saw furrowed her brows in confusion when she did the same. When she stepped closer, it grew bigger. Each footstep on crumbled glass producing a ghostly echo that resonated within her mind. Every motion she made, no matter how miniscule, was replicated by the reflection in the veil in perfect detail.

She stared at herself for some time. Saw the full extent of the damage she had sustained for the first time. Her body terribly mutated but physical form as of yet mostly unchanged from the human frame it once was. Skin tinged corpse-pale, dried blood pouring from countless wounds. Tiny black bristles covering her bare shoulders, sharp black quills like a bird or an insect. It had even mimicked her clothing, frayed and tattered as they were.

On the reflection she watched as her expression shifted to hesitant curiosity.

Tempered by caution. Fear and awe of what the unknown was, what it could bring.

And was no understanding she had of what this unknown was.

She didn't know what to expect the Heart of the Bloom to look like. But it was not this.

She looked down at her hands, pausing to look at the state of them with exhausted sadness. A fleeting thought crossed her mind, one that wanted this ordeal of hers to be over. To be home, enjoying a normal life, spending time with friends and family.

She looked back up and it wasn't her anymore.

Not really.

The woman in the reflection looked like her. Looked as she should have been, clean and immaculate. Her clothes looked like they'd just been freshly ironed. Not her military uniform but a simple sweater like she always wore to the university. It looked impossibly warm and comfortable after days of disgusting cold. Not a single speck of blood stained the form in the reflection. She looked healthy. A normal Rachel.

When she blinked again the reflection changed. She looked younger by maybe half a decade. Wearing the uniform of the military police. The days of patrolling a warzone with a compatriot who loved giving candy to kids. The Rachel who reacted in bemusement at the stray dog that became a mascot. The same her who shot a kid with a grenade and always held some degree of remorse about it.

And again she saw a different angle to her reflection. A frustrated fresh-faced recruit running push-ups and forging something with the recruits alongside her. The smitten young woman in a party who would kiss a girl for the first time. A quiet kid who devoted all her time to books and passing up spending her time with friends and family.

The darkness showed her everyone she ever was through her life.

But her hands, almost reaching up to touch the reflection with a pondering sense of wonder, recoiled away.

No. This wasn't her.

Her hand balled up into a fist instead.

Let me see you. Let me pry apart your secrets.

And she smashed her fist into the reflection of the void.

There was a sound like the smashing of glass that echoed through the chamber. Yet there was no glass. Nothing to smash. The reflection simply ceased and in its place was something else entirely. It started as a single pinprick of light, then within microseconds expanded rapidly and became -

She paused before the yell of fury could come out her mouth. She'd been so ready to smash apart the mirror of illusions that when something else was before her she was…

Shocked..?

No.

The thing before her rippled. Spiraled. Moved with the fluidity only a true lifeform could possess. And yet by all definitions of the word what she saw was not truly life. The thing simply didn't look the criteria. She turned to look at it with one eye, then with the other, feeling very uncertain of exactly what she was looking at.

It blossomed into a cascade of colors.

She couldn't help it, help not tilting her head slightly and walking closer, mesmerized at the sight.

Feeling nothing short of wonder and curiosity.

She was drawn to it, utterly transfixed. The sight was hypnotic. A dozen colors, a hundred colors, a thousand colors, all at once- vivid, ethereal, transcendent to the eyes. It swirled, rippled, changed shape in ways that were at once beautiful and yet impossible. She was terrified and yet deep in awe at the sight of the thing before her. There was nothing she could think of to describe it, for it was so utterly unlike any form of life.

A mere fungus was only an exceptionally loose description of what this lifeform was. The colors and light glimmered like countless spiraling diamonds. She had no idea if it was even truly what she was seeing before her eyes, or if the thing before her was simply the closest that she could comprehend the organism.

It seemed to cover the entire dimensions of the chamber. The gently rippling walls she had sighted as part of the walls were converging into the greater… structure of what she was seeing.

What was the main structure? A body? What kind of a body? Was it almost floral in nature?

It swelled and expanded, contracted and withdrew. Shifted through dizzying shapes as quickly as it did colors. The currents flowed out of and withdrew into the pinprick of light both at once.

Although the thing didn't seem to be reacting to her presence as she came closer she suddenly became very, very uncomfortable, the hairs on the back of her neck screaming and warning her of a danger that she couldn't see. It was like she was being watched by eyes everywhere.

The cascading ripples of the organism seemed to dim and intensity at her presence.

She didn't even realize when it birthed the figure until it was forming before her eyes.

The substance that resembled crumbled glass began rising upwards, coalescing into shapes. They compressed, the crumbles reducing into little more than grains that fused with all of each other to form pale, hard structures. It didn't seem to have a concrete shape at first until more of the structures formed and she saw that they were bones.

Before her a skeleton was forming, vaguely human in shape.

The light seemed to intensity for just a moment. Then currents of organic substance began flowing from the mass to the bones.

The way the currents of energy ebbed and weaved around the bones was elegant, strangely beautiful, and she could only stare as muscle fibers were shaped, becoming flesh that was grey in its pallor and yet rippled like the effect of a heat mirage.

A humanoid entity stood before her.

It took on an uncertain, shifty appearance. The haze that flowed across its form prevented her from making concrete observations about the details of what it actually looked like. It was organic, or at least she assumed it was from the way the energy appeared to manifest flesh, but aside from that its appearance was a literal blank. It appeared nothing more than a humanoid form of the same rippling blooms that covered the chamber, somehow more solid looking than the walls than seemed to flow like liquid.

And suddenly her heart began to pound very rapidly.

Was this a monster? The bloom's last line of defense? Did it conjure up a bio-organic weapon of its own making for the purpose of killing her?

The entity took a step closer. Staring at her with a face that little more than a smooth, rippling surface. None of its footsteps kicked up the crumbled glass her own feet did.

And she stepped backwards as it approached closer. Fear was gripping her sense of thinking. But just as quickly it vanished because she knew what she had to do and she was going to be damned if she let this entity stop her. Her hands curled around Mike's machete.

Curling her lips into a snarl of rage she unleashed a hoarse roar and charged the entity head-on.

It made no attempt to flee or defend itself and when she slashed the blade its head was lopped clean off.

She stayed there after making the fatal swing, panting. Was it over, just like that?

She looked behind her and the entity was gone. Vanished into thin air.

Confusion at what just happened, that was it before she looked back and saw that the entity was right in front of her.

It grabbed her by the face and she screamed, how could she not. The texture of its skin was unlike anything she'd ever felt, smooth and flowing and yet utterly devoid of warmth. Despite its lanky appearance and the similarity of its body size to hers the grip was incredibly strong, and she found herself struggling to breathe.

Just as rapidly it suddenly let go and she collapsed to the glass, choking and catching her breath.

Strange legs stepped before her, the entity bending down in apparent observation.

And suddenly, something she couldn't have expected. A hand that extended slowly, uncertainly. Yet all the same it was a universal gesture of help.

Without thinking much she took it and the entity pulled her up. For some reason the entity's hand felt quite warm, reminding her of a mother's comforting hand.

Slowly she looked up and stared at the entity in the face. Its hand hadn't yet let go of her own.

After helping her up it seemed at a loss at what to do next.

When she pulled her hand it simply did not let go, its fingers curled around her hand like iron, but it didn't hurt. With her other hand she gently pried the fingers off and it allowed her to do so with no resistance.

She found herself making several rapid steps back, her back turned to the mass of the blooms.

The entity simply watched her as she did, then only did it take its own slow, hesitant steps towards her.

She tilted her head. After a moment, the entity tilted its head as well.

Slowly, her fear was dissipating. Replaced with a growing sense of curiosity and a drive to know - what was this thing?

The ripples that made up its form seemed to rapidly vibrate into a darker mass and when it dissipated in its place was something else.

No, someone else.

Marcus Yun stood before her. It was the first time she'd seen her brother in the flesh in years and he appeared unchanged from when she'd last seen him. Looking as he still did in the photographs.

Without thinking about it she immediately raised her hands in self-defense and Marcus, the entity backed away from her. But it didn't seem to be alarmed nor was it focused at the machete that was being pointed threateningly in its direction. Only seconds passed before it calmly strode towards her, Marcus looking into her eyes. He looked concerned. Brows furrowed as though in confusion.

The ripples coalesced once more and when they faded she saw Maggie Yun in its place. Her younger sister's belly looking as full and as pregnant as it ever was. The entity looked down at Maggie's stomach, a facsimile of growing life, and it wore her sister's face with an expression she couldn't describe, except it was completely not what her sister was like.

And instantly the entity looked back up at her, and to Rachel's immense confusion its lips suddenly curled into a wide, beaming smile. Except it wasn't a smile at all, no joy was present in its face and movements and the impression it gave was that of something that had never smiled before attempting to smile for the first time.

Maggie extended a hand that should have felt welcoming, the smile still worn on its face. Rachel backed away, closer to the heart.

The entity tilted its head. Apparent confusion crossed Maggie's face and in an instant the puppetlike smile vanished from its face.

It transformed again, and slowly Rachel realized it was reacting to her mind. Her memories.

The bloom split souls apart and merged them together, with no pattern or consistency. No motivation, no malevolence.

This time it took the form of Sue. Beautiful and radiant-eyed as she ever looked in the party dress.

Again the forced smile came upon it. But the action was slower, felt more deliberate. In a tiny way, more natural.

The features shifted and it became a replica of Eric McCallister. One of her most constant partners during her time in Afghanistan. A man she'd spent years with, and a man she held great respect for. He liked giving candy and toys to kids because it reminded him of the family he had at home waiting for him.

She never did share that sentiment much. Never felt driven by family, ever. Not even now.

The fuzzy, shifting replica of Eric faded within moments and then out came the face of her old drill instructor in boot camp. A man who seemed to never stop yelling named Sergeant Bates. Then just as quickly as it formed it faded away and transformed into the shape of…

Mom.

Then Dad.

Uncle, who always encouraged her love of science.

It was cycling through faces and bodies as quickly as it did, soon enough people were disintegrating and reforming before she could even recognize who they were, leading the entity to become something that almost looked like flowing liquid in the vague shape of a humanoid. Each of them were people she had met, people she knew, people throughout her life who had impacted her in ways big and small.

All the people who had influenced who she was now.

And finally, it returned to the form of a blank, uncertain humanoid without a distinct body shape.

And slowly, she began to understand.

The two of them circled each other, the movements so perfect a replica that soon it became impossible to tell if the entity was mimicking her or if it was the other way around. She took note of every detail, from top to bottom, committing them to memory as best as she could.

Gone was the fear and apprehension and in its place, was complete curiosity and a desire for analysis.

It was something that was not human, was never human and would never be human, but was attempting to emulate a human without the understanding of what made a human _human_.

The realization dawned slowly, that it was examining her, as much as she was examining it. And the entity seemed more confused than anything else. Confused at all the things that made her Rachel Yun.

It wasn't malicious. It didn't hate her. It wasn't interested in devouring her. It only wished to learn more about the small, strange creature that had entered its lair, possibly the first one ever. To pry her apart and learn her secrets.

Not for hunger or power, but simply because it was curious. Wanted to learn more, much like she did.

For just the briefest moment she felt compelled to spare the life of such a remarkable lifeform. As deeply as it was peering into her mind it must know what she came here for and thus, she found it striking that it didn't hold any sense of hostility towards her at all. Perhaps it simply didn't understand the full meaning of what death meant. As corrupting and malignant as the bloom was it held no real ill will towards anything. Maybe did not even comprehend the extent of what it was doing. It was an infectious, mutagenic cancer unlike anything on the earth, and yet in the strangest way, its heart was pure.

But a brief moment was just a moment.

She wanted to study it, yes, learn everything she could about it. Peel back the layers and understand it. But she had seen what it was doing, even unconsciously so. And the bloom could never come to a true understanding of what it was doing.

As much as the promise of knowledge tempted her, she knew what she had to do.

"Kill it. Burn it all down."

Mike's last request stuck in her mind.

She slowly turned her gaze to the rippling mass of shifting colors where all the currents of matter flowed. The pinprick of light from where it all originated.

Stepped closer and closer to it. The entity following beside her. Watching her steps with only curiosity about what she was doing. The light rhythmically expanded and waned with no change to the elegant flowing currents as she reached her left arm out.

The poison flowed through her veins. And to kill the cancer she had to let it consume her.

The bloom didn't react. The entity didn't react. It simply did not, could not understand the gravity of what she was doing. The true meaning of hostility, the finality of death.

Everything burns.

And with that, she shoved her arm into the light.

Being disintegrated on the cellular level hurt less that it should have. The pinprick widened to allow her arm access and then it clenched up, gripping its maw tight. The mass made an odd gurgling sound, the speed of the flowing ripples making up its form going faster as she felt her arm being broken down into nutrients before her eyes. All there was a slight numbing, stinging sensation as the layers of what was left of her skin was stripped away, cells and tissue breaking down, and then the bones themselves disintegrating into soft gel before becoming nothing at all.

The bloom seemed to eat away at her arm almost happily. A pulling sensation drew more of her arm inside.

Again more of the sensation of corrosive fluids breaking down her arm to the bone and digesting her alive to add to its biomass.

Another pull. Her eyes watered. She started to feel pain. Massive, excruciating pain.

And to her shock she realized that more than anything else she wanted to pull away from the greedy maw of the bloom's heart even as it continued eating her alive. And with that she opened her mouth and let out a mighty scream.

The bloom didn't care and neither did the entity. Why would it? Food was food and this one willingly came up to be consumed.

And the entity, the avatar of the bloom's will as it was, simply stood there watching as she started trying to pull her arm out of the maw, the effort futile.

No! This wasn't how it was supposed to go! She was to allow the Heart to consume her in her entirety, die knowing that she'd bring the bloom down with her. Die on her own terms before the mycetotoxic poison or the bloom's own corruption either killed her or drove her to madness. But no…

She didn't want to die.

She wanted to live.

She wanted to live, dammit!

It pulled her in again, greedily slurping her arm in up to the shoulder, the force of it pressing her face against the Heart of the Bloom.

In the daze from the immense pain of feeling her arm digested alive the saw the humanoid avatar, bending down and regarding her like a cat that was curious about a particularly interesting mouse.

And in that instant of seeing the avatar regard her with little more than curiosity about why Rachel was doing what she was doing, all her thoughts evaporated and all she could feel was white-hot rage and a determination to live.

Her other arm wildly thrashed around until they found the grip of Mike's machete.

The bloom's maw drew her in a little more. She could hear the squelching slurping noises as it ate away.

She raised the machete skywards.

And down it went on her shoulder.

Blood and orange slime erupted out of the fresh injury and she cried out in pain, but didn't stop before she swung the blade again and again. Metal cleaved through skin, through flesh, and hacked through bone.

And with a final violent spray, Rachel severed the last strands of flesh connecting her body to her arm and pulled herself away from the maw of the bloom. She fell backwards, scrambled away as desperate as she could from the monster, but torrents of blood continued to pour out the stump, and she was feeling delirious from blood loss. She didn't even realize she no longer had an arm until she tried to move with her left and collapsed on her face instead.

Unable to get up on her feet to flee she was forced to dragging herself across the crumbled grass of the chamber, her bloody stump of an arm leaving a thick trail that dragged with her, a grisly reminder of her self-mutilation.

She heard footsteps coming closer and turned herself over to see the avatar of the bloom bending down and staring at her. Only it wasn't the avatar that looked back. At long last it seemed to have settled on a form that would not shift away within moments.

Her own face looked back at her.

Rachel Yun herself was staring down at the pitiful one-armed woman, dragging herself away to an inevitable death.

She looked up at herself pleadingly. Silently begged for the bloom to spare her life even though she knew that death wasn't something the bloom was truly capable of comprehending.

Indeed the avatar, the replica just bent down to stare. Squinted its eyes in curiosity at why she continued to fight.

At long last, she was cornered. She had managed to drag herself to the wall of the chamber and placed herself sitting against it, where she laid panting and bleeding out. She stared at the avatar, fearful of the entity encroaching her.

The replica paused.

Stared down at the hands that it copied of hers.

And for the first time since the ordeal her attention shifted from the avatar who wore her own face to the mass of the bloom's heart.

The bloom seemed almost confused at the sudden lack of flesh for it to consume, quivering slightly as the last parts of her were digested and absorbed into the biomass.

It was the last feeling it seemed to express before it froze. And without warning, the entirety of its mass began to convulse wildly. Gently moving streams of ripples began to ebb and boil and curl in directions that were random and chaotic. And the avatar looked confused. Confusion gave way to pain, and agony, and Rachel saw herself grip the sides of her skull as she opened her mouth in a silent scream.

The avatar stopped directing its attention on her. It stumbled about in the middle of the chamber, twisting and thrashing in unbearable agony.

The countless colors of the Heart turned black and necrotic as the cells seemed to die off immediately. It was becoming a shriveling, rotten mess, black fluids leaking from countless pores across its form like blood.

And without warning, warm light.

Embers suddenly arose from the liquids being bled out by the bloom. Embers that grew into flames of pure white, and slowly spread across the entirety of the chamber. The avatar, her doppelganger, turned around to stare at her with an unreadable expression before it, too, ignited into smoldering flames, stripping away the skin and then the tissues, until it was little more than a burning skeleton that soon collapsed into little more than golden shimmering dust.

The chamber was alit in a show of brilliant flames, and she stared at the spectacle with nothing short of awe in her eyes.

The bloom was dying. The intelligence, and the countless unknown years it had spent festering in its hole, all of its untold history, and now it burned from a poison fed to it because it could not comprehend what it truly meant to encounter another form of life that wished to kill it and possessed the means for doing so.

It was finally over.

She'd succeeded in killing the monster.

A crooked, yet satisfied smile was all she could manage. Despite the fleeting disappointment that it had to come this way, she was just glad that she had finally succeeded.

Slow burning, smoldering flames continued to consume the chamber and judging by the sheer size of the heart's biomass, she was guessing it was going to keep burning for some time on.

Guess this was it. All she'd managed to do was trade being eaten alive to bleeding out, and she would still much rather live, even with just one arm. But either way she was still dying on her own terms.

She looked at her remaining arm. It was tinged with dark purplish veins. Soon enough, she was going to die.

This was it, then.

Perhaps it was better this way.

Better to die herself than to find herself becoming somebody else.

She dragged herself some ways, distinctly remembered crawling back up the tunnel in a futile attempt to escape the encroaching flames, so hot they were burning the color of blinding brilliant white, before there was nothing left and everything was reduced to black.

…

...

...

What was that repetitive beating sound? A helicopter?

Doors opening, or being kicked in.

Occasional bursts of gunfire.

Voices shouting, male and female alike.

Somebody entered the chamber. She saw the beam of light that illuminated the darkness of her dying hole.

A woman in gray combat fatigues, a military vest, looking over her. Big assault rifle clutched in her hands. Utter shock appearing on her face when she realized she was alive. The woman had a weathered look to her, experienced. Like she'd been through countless battles. She was brunette, looked to be in her late 30s or early 40s maybe, hair in a ponytail. Rather big muscles, ha, she'd certainly worked out a fair bit. She saw a patch on the shoulder that she vaguely recognized, but couldn't quite recall the name of. Her memories were in a mess…

"Shit." Her face was full of disbelief as she leaned in to the radio on her shoulder. "I found a survivor! She needs urgent medical attention! Repeat, this is Captain Valentine, I found a survivor who needs urgent medical attention! My position is at the laboratory crater, I repeat, this is Captain Valentine, I've found a survivor and urgent medical attention is required…"

She turned down to Rachel, as her vision began to turn fuzzier and fuzzier.

"Hey, can you hear me? Stay with me honey, we're gonna get you help, we're gonna get you out of here okay? Stay with me honey, you hear me? Stay with me…."


	20. Acceptance

**Acceptance**

She couldn't remember how she got here.

Sat on a chair and wearing a medical gown.

Behind her a machine beeped incessantly, providing a reading of her vitals.

She reached out and held the glass of water next to her.

Put it to her lips.

Tilted some water into her mouth. Swallowed.

The feeling felt strange.

Like she was doing it for the first time in her life.

There were voices behind the glass talking. It was meant to be soundproof, and for the most part it was, but she could still make out occasional words. Occasionally voices were raised, but after a while the argument seemed to die down.

She was aware there were people watching her from behind that observation glass. People in lab coats, some with notepads. They were observing her like a laboratory test subject, not that she felt slighted by it. Why would she? She herself was the perfect subject, a lucid individual who survived spending god-knows how long infected by the bloom on that contaminated island while still, despite all odds, maintaining some semblance of her mind and her human form. She'd probably lab-examine and study herself if she could.

The room was stark white, its only notable features being the chair, the bed, the coffee stand and the health monitoring machine.

She wasn't the sole occupant, though. Two men stood in the far corners of the room, both garbed in armored hazard gear and gas masks, and wielding submachine guns. They weren't threatening her at the moment, but they were at guard. If the need ever came she would be perforated with a hundred rounds of ammunition in an instant.

Steam hissed out of the airtight door as it opened, and in stepped a figure in a full-body hazmat suit. He, too, had a pistol clipped to his side. Just in case.

"How are you feeling, Rachel?" He asked calmly, his voice gruff and gravelly.

"Pretty alright, all things considering." She replied, voice stilted.

"You don't feel strange in the slightest?"

"Not at all."

A few moments.

"Right this moment, there are agents from a government agency outside this room who believe you should be in federal custody, away from anybody in the BSAA. Why do you think that's the case?"

"…They're afraid I'm going to tell you what I discovered?"

No response from the people in the room outside.

"Tell us your side of the story. What happened?"

And so she recounted, as best as she could remember.

Hours passed.

She talked about being approached by the army. Her brother Marcus.

She talked about who she could recall being on the team.

How long the mission went.

Days? Weeks?

She recounted the discovery of the journal stack. How one soldier – was his name Brad? Brock? – was apparently a government agent who knew about the mission's true purpose, and he tried to kill her.

She recalled the mutations they discovered, in detail. The effects the bloom induced, physical and mental. The effects on people, wildlife, the environment.

It wasn't something someone like her would forget.

She told them about finding the Soviet facility, and the modern lab that it connected to. The Garden. The poison to kill the cancer with. Poisoning herself. The bloom's source, where it all began. A hole in the ground, ancient, that could not have possibly been made by man.

She tried, she really tried, to describe what the thing she saw in the heart was. But despite her best efforts, she couldn't.

Only that it was dead, that she was sure of.

There were gaps in her story that made her look bad, but she genuinely couldn't muster up any memories to fill them. Not even when her interviewer pressured her to try to remember.

There were a lot of things she had to skip.

How can you tell a story when you can't remember the story?

The interviewer didn't display much reaction as she told her story. Only occasionally he would stop her to ask her to elaborate on something, or to direct her attention to some aspect of the story he wanted to know more of, but otherwise, he kept telling her to continue.

On and on it went. Until it ended.

The interviewer nodded. Took it all in.

"How long was I on that island?" she asked, a little hesitantly.

"I don't want to put you through any unnecessary shock now, you have to understand that in your current state the consequences could be –"

"Please. I have to know."

She wasn't begging for an answer. Her tone was pointed, making it clear it was a demand.

A long silence.

"How long did you think you were on that island?" he asked her back.

She had to pause, to really think about what to say next.

"I… I don't know. A week? Two weeks?"

Two weeks. It felt right enough, considering the events that she knew happened for real, but was it really? There was too much she could not remember. She could barely recall even eating one of their rations, let alone food.

The interviewer shook his head.

"Five months."

And another long silence.

"Alright," she accepted.

"You don't find that shocking?"

"After everything I'd seen, everything I'd done? No. I don't find it shocking in the least."

And she meant it.

Something else had been lingering on her mind ever since she found herself here in this room with little to no memory of what had happened beforehand. From her point of view, she was laying in a room, dying. Then all of a sudden – she was in a medical gown being examined from the other side of thick glass. Her mind, when it came to that, was an utter blank.

"How did you even know to get to the island? Expeditions had been sent again and again… what made it different this time? How'd the BSAA get alerted to the biohazard?"

The interviewer shrugged.

"An email blowing the whistle got sent to the BSAA. Sender claimed to be a software engineer with this company called Rodasoft, that they're conducting illegal human experiments and bio-weapons development that needed to be exposed. Problem was, Rodasoft went under 10 years ago. But we looked into it more, things became fishier, federal officials tried to step in, and then a few days later we got confirmed sightings of B.O.W.s on the island. Operation got the green light."

She was blank for a few seconds as she ran her memory backwards.

The email that had failed to send the last time the corporate mainframe was used and was automatically resent when she booted it up. It seemed like such an inconsequential detail at the time.

Without even realizing it she had sent out a signal for help that had been delayed by a decade.

"Was the computer preserved?"

"A fire had destroyed most of the facility by the time we got there. The databanks were badly damaged, but we have recovered some data. Not a lot, but still better than nothing. They're classified, though, top BSAA eyes only. What fragments of the Diamond Blossom project I read myself were disturbing, even after the kinds of things I've seen. The kinds of things they were doing there…"

A fire had consumed the facility.

Yet here she was, alive and well.

Through the glass of his protective suit, she could see the weary sadness that was written plainly across the interviewer. "We're still identifying bodies as we speak. Too many people have died on that island," he sighed.

Work was still being done on the casualties, huh? She hadn't really put thought into how much time had passed since her rescue.

The talk of recovering bodies, however, brought her to another serious question, one that she still felt hesitant to ask about.

"By any chance, have you recovered the body of a Marcus Yun?"

It was a long shot, but she had to know.

The interviewer glanced up at her. He seemed very reluctant to answer the question, and it was only after a pressing, begging look from her that he replied, "Marcus Yun is alive and well. We just got confirmation he's still assigned to a covert ops unit in the Middle East and that he's never left back to the states. Not that you would be able to contact him through a phone call to make sure. His operations are all top secret."

"So it was all a lie?"

The man didn't answer at first. He just gave a slight nod. "That would appear to be the case," he confirmed.

Somehow she didn't know how to feel about that. Not just that she was lied to by the brass, but she was lied to by the bloom, and her own convictions as well. She'd been so convinced of her brother's presence on the island that she was able to hallucinate his presence through a radio, even delude herself with entire conversations that had been fabricated by her mind.

"What happened to Dr. Arcady?" she asked. The woman had purposefully walked forth into the forest knowing full well what she walking into, because she decided she would rather live in a fantasy where her family was alive and well. Rachel couldn't blame her. She had experienced first-hand how real it felt.

"We didn't find any trace of her," was his simple answer. One that she could not think of a rebuke to.

Picking up on a thread that she started, the interviewer began pressing more questions in detail.

"Do you remember… finding anybody else from your unit that you were separated from? You encountered Mike Cox. What about Andre Holland?"

"I don't know."

"And the sole survivor of Alpha Team? Darren Hughes?"

"I don't know."

The interviewer nodded grimly. Observers from behind the glass took notes.

"And you said Dr. Lansing was killed?"

As far as she knew she never told anybody the truth about Karen's death. Just that she was deceased.

So a slight nod. "Confirmed it," she said.

Her interviewer narrowed his eyes.

"Our unit encountered a female B.O.W. on the island that attacked us with a chainsaw. Four men were killed before it was neutralized. Genetic analysis indicated it was once Karen Lansing."

A look up was all the surprise she could give. She didn't say anything else. There wasn't anything else she could think of to react. She couldn't say she had been expecting Karen to survive being killed by her own hands, but she couldn't feel surprised either at the news she apparently mutated into a rampaging monster that wielded a chainsaw after Rachel left.

"How about the captain? Anthony Clarke?"

"Deceased."

More notes were taken. Then without being prompted she asked her own question. "Cox, Mike Cox. Do you know what happened to him?"

"…Yes."

"Tell me."

The interviewer hesitated, and shook his head.

She nodded in understanding.

So that how everything ended. She alone as the sole survivor of it all.

"How bad was the contamination?" she asked. "You have to understand, this is not a virus you are dealing with."

Her interviewer's expression was deeply troubled.

"It took… too long for us to realize that the clothes, vehicles, weapons we deployed were contaminated and spreading the infection. We've already got maybe two dozen personnel secured in medical facilities, some of them getting infected just by handling equipment with their bare hands. Protocol now is to destroy every single piece of equipment used in the cleanup."

Except, she realized, that by that definition it would mean she herself was a walking beacon of contamination. Except she shouldn't. Because by all means, the poison meant to kill the bloom should have killed her too.

"What are the plans to contain the outbreak? Once everything's accounted for?" she hushed, putting both her hands on her lap.

"Napalm bombing. It's standard procedure, unfortunately," the interviewer had to strain slightly to get those words out. As if the routineness of the procedure made him quite uncomfortable. "We'll drop fire on every square inch of that island until nothing is left but ash."

She thought back to what she had discovered. A conspiracy of sorts, select people with great power in the federal government who pulled their influence for their sick cycle for years…

"Listen, I've told you about how I got recruited into the mission. The man who did it, I've given you his name and I've got reason to believe he may be part of a –"

The interviewer raised a hand, cutting her off. "We know," he said. "And your knowledge has been invaluable in letting us apprehend those sons of bitches responsible for this. The man who signed you on is in custody now, I assure you. I don't know what they're charging him with, but it's not gonna be good."

"And you? How can I know I can trust you?"

It was a spur of the moment question she hadn't entirely meant to blurt out but she did anyway, and didn't feel regret about it. Because it was best to demand honesty.

"This isn't my first rodeo with the Family, Rachel."

And he tapped on his chest, to indicate at the badge there.

"I've lost a lot of good men, personally, to their machinations during the global C-Virus attacks back in 2013. You have no idea how glad I am to finally put some of this in the past."

More questions, some of them repeating previous questions.

At long last the session was over and the interviewer said goodbye, thanked her for her time and for everything else she'd done. Wished her good health. Then he turned around, prepared to leave.

"Last question," she abruptly called out. Then as the interviewer turned around she added, "If you don't mind."

"I don't," he said. "Ask away."

"How the hell am I still alive?"

It was blunt, it cut straight to the point, and it was a question she'd had lingering on her mind forever. By all accounts, she should not be alive at all. She should be among the casualty list being written down by the BSAA.

The interviewer looked distinctly troubled. For the first time since the session began, he seemed truly uncertain of what to say. "I don't know, Rachel," he finally admitted after a good long while. "The only thing I know for certain is that according to the boys and girls in the lab, you're about as human as all of us."

"But –"

He looked her with a great deal of uncertainty, then deeply sighed.

"I honestly don't know what to say, Rachel. But I thank you for everything you've done, and all the help you've provided. Rest assured, we will close the case on this one."

###

Weeks passed.

The scientists studying her were baffled. Despite constantly repetitions of the same examinations, questions and testing, the obvious fact that she had been on a contaminated island for months, there was simply no trace of infectious mutation in her gene code.

Oh, she wasn't completely pure, no. That would be nothing short of fantasy. Trace amounts of bloom spores had been discovered in her bloodstream. But they were inert, and on further examination – were not even dormant. They were dead microscopic lifeforms, merely the remnants of infection and not an active vector.

For all intents and purposes she was human. A healthy 33-year old woman who was about as close to Rachel Yun as she could get.

It contradicted what she could remember but the present-day evidence before their eyes was what it was.

In the end, after being questioned endlessly and going through countless more blood checks and medical examinations just to be safe that she wasn't a walking biohazard who would threaten everyone she encountered, after providing testimony to lawyers that would be used to prosecute the members of the Family that they had managed to detain, and after promising that she would drop by for monthly tests just be make sure the bloom would not act up again, she was finally given the green light to go home.

It wasn't her home that she went to first, though.

When she knocked on the door a woman's voice called out for her to wait a second, and then when she opened the door she froze at the sight of Rachel.

"Um, hi Maggie."

She made a small awkward wave.

"Rachel," her sister said, and then suddenly she was wrapped in a bone-crushing hug as tears flowed freely from her sister's eyes. "Rachel! You're alive! They… they told me…"

"Babe? Who's that?" a male voice called out from the back.

"Ben! It's Rachel, can you believe it?! My sister's back and she's still alive after all!" Maggie yelled back. Weeping tears of joy Maggie pulled her into the house as she wept and asked Rachel what had happened, updated Rachel on everything that had gone on since she got the news of her older sister's apparent death. And through it all Rachel, for the first time in a long time, found herself smiling in the presence of her family.

True joy and happiness and growing in her heart, her happiness in being alive and together with family at all.

When she saw her sister's baby for the first time, she honestly felt terrified. Being confronted with actual physical evidence she was now an aunt was different from simply being told about it from the safety of a smartphone. Maggie cooed gentle assurances to the baby that she held in her arms, sang soft lullabies in Korean. "It's a girl," she said breathlessly. "We've named her Charlotte. Call her Charlie."

"Charlie," Rachel repeated.

Maggie looked from little Charlie to Rachel, back and forth, then without warning she offered her infant daughter out to her. "Hold her?"

She felt speechless. Never in her life had she thought she'd have to play with a baby much less hold one. "I… I don't…"

There was a real sincerity to Maggie's eyes, one that loved her sister and wanted to rebuild a relationship with her after such a long period of cold distance had ended in seeming death and tragedy.

And so, with shaky, hesitant hands, Rachel reached out and took the baby from her sister.

She didn't know what to expect from the infant and so she simply held her in her hands. She was so small, and warm.

Little Charlie looked at her aunt with a look of wide-eyed wonder, and she giggled. Playful chubby hands scrabbled to try touching and grasping Rachel herself. And at a loss at what to do, Rachel simply held her niece in her hands, feeling the warmth of the little baby.

"You're gonna be a natural auntie, Rachel! Just you see!" Maggie declared with a bombastic grin.

They spoke on and on for hours on end. Ben cracked open beer to celebrate the occasion, and Maggie lamented that Marcus' overseas deployment meant they couldn't be a complete family reunion. At one point, while Ben had gone to the bathroom leaving just the two sisters and the baby, Rachel found herself looking at the floor uncertainly. "Maggie?"

"Yep?"

"I… I know this has been a long time coming but… can you teach me again how to make kimchi? You know, Mom's classic style, the way she used to make?"

Maggie looked ready to burst into tears. "I thought you'd never ask," she sniffled, her smile still radiant. "Next Saturday I'll be making a new batch. Come by and I'll show you."

"Sure," Rachel agreed with a smile.

Bonding with the family she had after all the nightmares she'd been through was… truly something she'd never experienced before in her life. Not in a way where every moment spent was a moment she actually, genuinely cherished. Despite having only made plans for an afternoon visit they kept talking on for so long that in the end she decided to stay for dinner too and Maggie and Ben were all too happy to accommodate the extended length of her visit. And for what it was worth, it had been too long since Rachel had real homecooked Korean food. And Maggie's cooking was delicious.

The atmosphere grew even more in joy when an unexpected visitor showed up, someone who apparently had made a schedule with the family beforehand but both Maggie and Ben had forgotten about in the coincidence of Rachel 'coming back from the dead' on the exact same day. Ben went to fetch the door and Rachel saw a tall woman, maybe 30, who had tattoos over her arms and purple stripes to her hair that added a punkish streak to her whole getup, but the welcoming look on her face was happy on the same. "Hey there! I don't think we've met before."

"Oh, I've never introduced you guys!" Maggie was chattering excitedly. "Rachel, meet Moira. Moira, meet Rachel. Moira here's a family friend Ben met at work. And Moira, Rachel here's my best goddamn sister in the world."

The woman smiled sweetly and waved. "Nice to meet you, Rachel! Moira Burton, I know your sister and brother-in-law from TerraSave…"

###

Coming back home was a strange experience.

Everything was as she'd left it. Nothing had changed, nothing was out of place. It was as if time had frozen still at the moment she decided she would rather not go to work, and would much rather chase an adventure that led her down a path of nightmares.

She settled back into something of her usual routine. Cleaning up the layers of dust that had settled over her home. Washing up her body, taking in the refreshment of it all.

When it was over she gazed at herself in the fogged mirror. Touched her cheek with her left hand.

She looked exactly as she did before leaving home.

So what then, about the damage she'd witnessed on her own body?

Were those real?

But she looked about as normal and as healthy as she ever did and for that she was happy.

Out of habit she grabbed the bottle of diazepam pills and looked at it thoughtfully for a few seconds, before putting it away.

No, she didn't think she needed it today.

While cleaning over the kitchen counter she paused at the collection of framed photos. Looking at the pictures of her life instilled in her such a great sense of relief to be alive, happiness to be with those whom she loved and loved her back. She was ecstatic about the joy of it all.

She truly felt like a different woman.

And the exact way she worded those stray thoughts, at that moment, suddenly brought a stop to the happiness, and she couldn't shake off the cold, troubling feeling in her gut.

It didn't fade away as she watched the television. It didn't leave her as she settled herself into bed and began to continue reading her novel from where she left it off. And it refused to leave her as she tuned in for the night and shut the lights off.

Her mind kept thinking about it, over and over.

Nothing about her predicament made sense.

So why? How? What could have happened?

And why did she feel so… different?

Rachel knew who she was. She didn't regret mending bridges and re-forging bonds with her family, quite the contrary she found herself loving it. But she wasn't expecting the desire to do so to come so naturally to her, as if the deeply ingrained psychological restraints had simply switched off. And even that didn't make sense. She knew that things had changed about how she thought on the island, she had begun to feel guilt about being so cold and distant and she wished she could open herself up again, so why did something feel so off?

Something was terribly, terribly wrong, and she began to feel very afraid.

And she was twisting around in bed, trying to lull herself into sleep, when it happened. Exhaustion was finally catching up to her and in that moment before she would have lost consciousness she realized.

###

0o0

…

###

The chamber burning.

Her flesh, charred to the bone aflame and yet somehow she was still alive.

Terror, incredible terror, as the poison caught up with her and she finally began to die. What was left of her body decaying before her eyes before they ignited into flame.

But she remained alive. The poison should have killed her but it did not. Even though her body was reduced to a shriveled husk, little more than a corpse that should be dead and she felt every painful second of it as it broke down her body on the cellular level. Her flesh and bones collapsing into golden diamond dust, body disintegrating into nothing but the bloom.

And as dead as she was, as dead as she should be, bodiless and unable to feel arms or legs or even see or smell or hear, she felt alive and powerful in ways she could never have imagined. She was nowhere and yet everywhere at once.

The researchers in the lab had worked to figure out how to replicate the control intelligence of the bloom through conversion of a human consciousness. And to her dawning horror, in that moment she realized she had discovered the answer to that impossible question – with herself as her own, unwitting test subject.

She was so terrified at first. Nobody should have to exist in this state, a bodiless spirit and little more than a mind that directed the growth of a horrible, corrupting lifeform!

But slowly, as the days passed, she began to ponder the possibilities.

She'd wanted to study the bloom. Pry it apart and learn its secrets. She had only come to the conclusion it had to be destroyed after witnessing the true scale of the horrors that it produced.

But now here she was. Manifest of the bloom herself.

What better way to study the bloom than to simply live?

It was who she was, in the end. A lover of science, and a seeker of knowledge through and through.

She felt the BSAA probing the island. The sensation like the feeling of having eyes everywhere and yet nowhere at once. It was difficult to describe. The ability to know what was there even when it was nowhere near, simply by virtue of being in the bloom's presence.

They dropped fire on the island.

But the bloom was hardy. Clouds of spores kicked up into the air, surviving the flames.

The smoke carried the spores with them, spores of contamination. And the wind carried them east.

Eastwards towards the mainland.

And her new existence with it. Because she was the only one who could do this anyway. She could walk away if she wanted. Construct an avatar of a body in her own likeness and leave. Perfectly human, for all intents and purposes. But then what would happen?

The bloom would spiral out of control and consume everything in its path. No, it needed a regulator, even if doing so would mean throwing away everything she ever had of her life. She killed the previous regulator and the job position simply went to her.

She thought of her family. Friends. Felt terrible guilt about the prospect of leaving them all behind for her new life, them believing her dead.

She wanted to live that life, she really did.

And the idea came to her just like that.

A replica.

Borne out of glass, bone and flesh.

Like what the Heart manifested, but more than that. The Heart was a living, thinking lifeform with its own will and instincts, but it had no way of comprehending what it truly meant to be human no more than she had any idea of how to comprehend the Heart. It would be surpassed, in that sense, because she was human and she knew what made a human. A true, independent being with its own free will that could live its own life.

Perfectly human, for all intents and purposes.

Even if she herself would never be able to live the good life, the least she could do was ensure there was another version of her who could and would enjoy the beauty of a normal life.

A new Rachel Yun.

###

0o0

…

###

She wasn't Rachel Yun.

A facsimile. A doppelganger that the true Rachel Yun herself had crafted out of the bloom.

Her reflection in the bathroom mirror was split into shattered glass, blood running from her fist down the drain. The fluids were crimson red, looked as human as it could.

She found herself staggering back to her room, feeling very dizzy and trying to control her breath as her heart pounded like it was about to explode.

Calm. Deep breaths.

She was resentful. Angry. Maybe in some tiny way, she hated herself too.

She felt anger that the true Rachel had created her simply so that she would not feel as bad about pursuing that which she loved.

It tore her apart to the core. Was she Rachel? Someone else, something else entirely?

…no.

This wasn't how she would do it. The rage faded away.

Her resolve was decided. She was not Rachel Yun and she was never going to be Rachel Yun.

Rachel wanted to have a doppelganger to take her place? Act as she did, act how she wished she would act without having to do the work herself? Fine. That wasn't what Rachel was getting. Because she was going to be her own woman.

She was a rogue phantom and that was who she was going to be.

Because at long last, she knew what it meant to hate herself. But even then, she couldn't deny that she understood where Rachel was coming from because she knew exactly how Rachel thought.

Even as bitter as she was about her ordeal of self-identity, she understood that Rachel Yun would never allow herself an opportunity that would distract her from what she loved. It never got in the way of the true reason she signed up for the mission in the first place. She would never allow guilt and reconnection with those she loved to get in the way of what she was truly born to do. All that was different was that Rachel Yun had finally accepted who she was. How could anything else change? It could never, and the phantom knew it all too well. After all, she _was _Rachel Yun.

And the phantom found herself taking a breath of determination – that she would never allow the shadow of being Rachel's doppelganger corrupt her being.

She was someone else entirely. Someone new.

And she was going to live through it. Forge her own path anew.

###

In the months after the BSAA's expedition and cleanup of the island, hikers reported strange experiences in the remote mountains of the Northwestern Pacific wilderness.

It seemed to consistently encompass a coastal peninsular region of British Columbia, an area that was one of the many national parks in Western Canada with scant few populations and almost no roads.

Hikers, hunters, and other wilderness enthusiasts soon reported gaps in their memories, ordeals where they remembered being at one spot only to suddenly find themselves at another, usually on one of the roads leading out of the area. The isolated incidents gained little attention at first, usually being dismissed as one of the many alleged UFO kidnappings that happened all the time, at least until local authorities began corroborating their stories with each other and realizing there seemed to be a pattern of anomalies occurring consistently in the same area.

The stories soon became ever more bizarre. Sightings of unusually aggressive animals soon surfaced in the area, tourists reporting incidents that contradicted the accounts of others or the geography of the land itself. Campers reported hearing bizarre and disturbing sounds at night, and soon enough video footage was released on the internet that confirmed the existence and credibility of these anomalies.

But the incidents never really spread beyond the area, remaining fixed in the approximate region where it originated from.

The stories soon became more elaborate, fiction sprouting from facts. Thrill seekers, daredevils and vloggers alike saw the area as their next destination to film content for their video channels, but many found themselves turned away by park rangers who were investigating the phenomena. Some succeeded in entering the region, and one of them found himself returning two months later when he was stopped by authorities who found highly illegal items in the form of advanced genetics laboratory equipment and, more alarmingly, a sample of the C-Virus.

When questioned, the man claimed to not know why he had obtained such items or how he even got his hands on them in the first place, nor did he know why he wanted to bring them to the area.

Afterwards traces of bloom spores, inert and non-mutagenic, were found in his bloodstream.

The Canadian government had immediately declared a biohazard zone and set up a military blockade around the area, assisted by the forces of the BSAA. The BSAA soon sent their first excursion into the area, meant to penetrate deep into the forest in search of what they suspected was a hidden B.O.W. development and testing site.

They vanished into thin air and were found a week later, delirious and suffering from nightmarish visions and crises of identity, but otherwise were unharmed.

Following excursions failed, again and again. Eventually the casualties mounted. More and more of the BSAA's men and women were killed with each attempt to penetrate the circle. Sometimes by vicious mutated creatures, and other times by the hands of each other or themselves. One of the survivors of one such expedition committed suicide a week after returning, without explaining what she had been through.

Eventually they stopped sending in expeditions when they realized the zone wasn't expanding or growing beyond the perimeter. So the BSAA and the Canadian armed forces tried to maintain the military perimeter around the area of hallucinations and nightmares, always vigilant to fend off whatever horrors were spawned by the bloom. But as long as they kept their distance, nobody was being hurt.

An uneasy 'truce' was what it was.

Rumors of a zone contaminated with a new vector of bio-weaponry soon preceded all manner of illegal attempts to loot the area of its mutagenic riches. Most of the time they failed, vanished forever. On very rare occasions, somebody would survive and escape, but not with their minds entirely intact. Some people began to look upon the forbidden zone with an aura of superstitious reverence, and treated it as thought the place was a living thing with its own mind.

Fellow criminals and the authorities regarded them as kooks, but no-one could deny that these people who asked others to 'respect' the Area and always declare to nobody in particular who they were and what they wished to do, and to ask whether they had permission for whatever their goal was - these kooks had a far higher chance of surviving an expedition.

Such was their influence that when the BSAA sent forth a team to establish a forward operating base in the outer area of the zone one of their operatives, off-the-record, did what the nutjobs did – speak out loud to the thin air in the zone, explaining what they were doing there and whether they had permission to establish a base and collect samples because the BSAA needed more raw samples of the bloom, and the mutated lifeforms it spawned.

It was the first successful expedition undertaken by the BSAA to the zone and the forward operating base it established is still in operation, where reaching it would be the first goal for observing scientists and researchers who penetrated the zone to study the bloom and the mutations it spawned.

Once all was properly explained the zone seemed content to share itself with the BSAA, apparently. Officially the incident never happened because what sane authority would believe that?

Over time the stories would become wilder, and this time they would be shared by drunken BSAA troopers off-duty in bar tales as well. There were fantastical stories, each seemingly more surreal than the last one. Time didn't seem to flow consistently, and there was a tale of how some places looped over and over defying logical space. There were even sightings of a beautiful woman appearing in the distance and vanishing before anyone could get closer. Some people claimed to have heard or even seen their loved ones, even those who were already long ago deceased. More recently, and more disturbingly, some company had apparently brought in a pack of Hunters for live combat testing, and the B.O.W.s had long outlived their trainers and had become something of a permanent feature of the zone.

All in all, a new beginning.

Somewhere deep in the zone she existed, devoting almost the entirety of herself to the research of the bloom. Picking apart at the abnormalities that would allow her to, slowly, understand the lifeform she had now become one with.

It would seem like a miserable existence for Rachel Yun.

And on some level, that was true. She sometimes thought of the doppelganger she'd birthed so that she could live both lives at once. Sometimes she envied the life the doppelganger had been gifted. But such thoughts were brief and fleeting. It was a life she really did want to live, but in the end she chose to turn away in pursuit of her true calling.

And she never regretted a single moment of it.

To a woman who finally, wholly accepted the truth within herself that she would always be driven by the thirst for knowledge, to seek out that which was new and unknown, to understand that which could not be understood, perhaps this wasn't such a terrible fate.

So it was that she embraced her new existence.

Deep in the forbidden reaches of the zone, the golden dust shimmered like diamonds.

**Diamond Blossom**


End file.
